THE  NEW 


REVELATION 


ARTHUR  CONAN 
DOYLE 


I 


UBRARY 


CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


THE   NEW  REVELATION 
ARTHUR  CONAN  DOYLE 


THE 

NEW  REVELATION 

BY 

ARTHUR  CONAN  DOYLE 

AUTHOB  OF  "THE  BBITISH  CAMPAIGN  IN 
TRANCE   AND  FLANDEBS,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1918, 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


To  all  the  brave  men  and  women,  humble 
or  learned,  who  have  had  the  moral 
courage  during  seventy  years  to 
face  ridicule  or  worldly  disad- 
vantage in  order  to  testify 
to  an  all-important  truth 


March,  1918 


PREFACE 

MANY  more  philosophic  minds  than 
mine  have  thought  over  the  religious 
side  of  this  subject  and  many  more  scientific 
brains  have  turned  their  attention  to  its 
phenomenal  aspect.  So  far  as  I  know,  how- 
ever, there  has  been  no  former  attempt  to 
show  the  exact  relation  of  the  one  to  the 
other.  I  feel  that  if  I  should  succeed  in 
making  this  a  little  more  clear  I  shall  have 
helped  in  what  I  regard  as  far  the  most  im- 
portant question  with  which  the  human  race 
is  concerned. 

A  celebrated  Psychic,  Mrs.  Piper,  uttered 
in  the  year  1899  words  which  were  recorded 
by  Dr.  Hodgson  at  the  time.  She  was 
speaking  in  trance  upon  the  future  of 
spiritual  religion,  and  she  said:  "In  the 
next  century  this  will  be  astonishingly  per- 
ceptible to  the  minds  of  men.  I  will  also 
make  a  statement  which  you  will  surely  see 
verified.  Before  the  clear  revelation  of 

Til 


viii  PREFACE 

spirit  communication  there  will  be  a  terrible 
war  in  different  parts  of  the  world.  The 
entire  world  must  be  purified  and  cleansed 
before  mortal  can  see,  through  his  spiritual 
vision,  his  friends  on  this  side  and  it  will 
take  just  this  line  of  action  to  bring  about 
a  state  of  perfection.  Friend,  kindly  think 
of  this."  We  have  had  "the  terrible  war 
in  different  parts  of  the  world."  The 
second  half  remains  to  be  fulfilled. 

A.  C.  D. 
1918. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB 

I    THE   SEAECH     .     .     .     .  >    .    ..;    .     .  13 

II    THE  REVELATION     .     .     .  ±  ......     .  47 

III  THE  COMING  LIFE  .     .     .  .    y    =.     ..     .63 

IV  PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  .     .     ...  82 

•'UPPLEMENTART  DOCUMENTS 

I    THE  NEXT  PHASE  OP  LIFE  .....  107 

II    AUTOMATIC  WRITING    .     .  >•    •••    >-    •••     .  112 

III    THE  CHERITON  DUGOUT    .  ..    ..;    L.,    .     .  115 


THE  NEW  REVELATION 


THE 

NEW  REVELATION 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  SEARCH 

THE  subject  of  psychical  research  is  one 
upon  which  I  have  thought  more  and  about 
which  I  have  been  slower  to  form  my  opin- 
ion, than  upon  any  other  subject  whatever. 
Every  now  and  then  as  one  jogs  along 
through  life  some  small  incident  happens 
which  very  forcibly  brings  home  the  fact 
that  time  passes  and  that  first  youth  and 
then  middle  age  are  slipping  away.  Such  a 
one  occurred  the  other  day.  There  is  a  col- 
umn in  that  excellent  little  paper,  Light, 
which  is  devoted  to  what  was  recorded  on  the 
corresponding  date  a  generation — that  is 
thirty  years — ago.  As  I  read  over  this  col- 
umn recently  I  had  quite  a  start  as  I  saw 

my  own  name,  and  read  the  reprint  of  a  let- 
is 


14  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

ter  which  I  had  written  in  1887,  detailing 
some  interesting  spiritual  experience  which 
had  occurred  in  a  seance.  Thus  it  is  mani- 
fest that  my  interest  in  the  subject  is  of 
some  standing,  and  also,  since  it  is  only 
within  the  last  year  or  two  that  I  have  finally 
declared  myself  to  be  satisfied  with  the  evi- 
dence, that  I  have  not  been  hasty  in  forming 
my  opinion.  If  I  set  down  some  of  my  ex- 
periences and  difficulties  my  readers  will 
not,  I  hope,  think  it  egotistical  upon  my 
part,  but  will  realise  that  it  is  the  most 
graphic  way  in  which  to  sketch  out  the 
points  which  are  likely  to  occur  to  any  other 
inquirer.  When  I  have  passed  over  this 
ground,  it  will  be  possible  to  get  on  to  some- 
thing more  general  and  impersonal  in  its 
nature. 

When  I  had  finished  my  medical  educa- 
tion in  1882,  I  found  myself,  like  many 
young  medical  men,  a  convinced  materialist 
as  regards  our  personal  destiny.  I  had 
never  ceased  to  be  an  earnest  theist,  because 
it  seemed  to  me  that  Napoleon's  question  to 
the  atheistic  professors  on  the  starry  night 
as  he  voyaged  to  Egypt:  "Who  was  it,  gen- 


THE  SEARCH  16 

tlemen,  who  made  these  stars?"  has  never 
been  answered.  To  say  that  the  Universe 
was  made  by  immutable  laws  only  put  the 
question  one  degree  further  back  as  to  who 
made  the  laws.  I  did  not,  of  course,  believe 
in  an  anthropomorphic  God,  but  I  believed 
then,  as  I  believe  now,  in  an  intelligent  Force 
behind  all  the  operations  of  Nature — a  force 
so  infinitely  complex  and  great  that  my  finite 
brain  could  get  no  further  than  its  existence. 
Right  and  wrong  I  saw  also  as  great  obvious 
facts  which  needed  no  divine  revelation. 
But  when  it  came  to  a  question  of  our  little 
personalities  surviving  death,  it  seemed  to 
me  that  the  whole  analogy  of  Nature  was 
against  it.  When  the  candle  burns  out  the 
light  disappears.  When  the  electric  cell  is 
shattered  the  current  stops.  When  the  body 
dissolves  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter. 
Each  man  in  his  egotism  may  feel  that  he 
ought  to  survive,  but  let  him  look,  we  will 
say,  at  the  average  loafer— of  high  or  low 
degree — would  anyone  contend  that  there 
was  any  obvious  reason  why  that  personality 
should  carry  on?  It  seemed  to  be  a  delu- 
sion, and  I  was  convinced  that  death  did  in- 


16  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

deed  end  all,  though  I  saw  no  reason  why 
that  should  affect  our  duty  towards  human- 
ity during  our  transitory  existence. 

This  was  my  frame  of  mind  when  Spir- 
itual phenomena  first  came  before  my  no- 
tice. I  had  always  regarded  the  subject  as 
the  greatest  nonsense  upon  earth,  and  I  had 
read  of  the  conviction  of  fraudulent  medi- 
ums and  wondered  how  any  sane  man  could 
believe  such  things.  I  met  some  friends, 
however,  who  were  interested  in  the  matter, 
and  I  sat  with  them  at  some  table-moving 
seances.  We  got  connected  messages.  lam 
afraid  the  only  result  that  they  had  on  my 
mind  was  that  I  regarded  these  friends  with 
some  suspicion.  They  were  long  messages 
very  often,  spelled  out  by  tilts,  and  it  was 
quite  impossible  that  they  came  by  chance. 
Someone  then,  was  moving  the  table.  I 
thought  it  was  they.  They  probably  thought 
that  I  did  it.  I  was  puzzled  and  worried 
over  it,  for  they  were  not  people  whom  I 
could  imagine  as  cheating — and  yet  I  could 
not  see  how  the  messages  could  come  except 
by  conscious  pressure. 

About  this  time — it  would  be  in  1886 — I 


THE  SEARCH  17 

came  across  a  book  called  The  Reminiscences 
of  Judge  Edmunds.  He  was  a  judge  of  the 
U.S.  High  Courts  and  a  man  of  high  stand- 
ing. The  book  gave  an  account  of  how  his 
wife  had  died,  and  how  he  iiad  been  able  for 
many  years  to  keep  in  touch  with  her.  All 
sorts  of  details  were  given.  I  read  the  book 
with  interest,  and  absolute  scepticism.  It 
seemed  to  me  an  example  of  how  a  hard 
practical  man  might  have  a  weak  side  to  his 
brain,  a  sort  of  reaction,  as  it  were,  against 
those  plain  facts  of  life  with  which  he  had 
to  deal.  Where  was  this  spirit  of  which  he 
talked?  Suppose  a  man  had  an  accident 
and  cracked  his  skull;  his  whole  character 
would  change,  and  a  high  nature  might  be- 
come a  low  one.  "With  alcohol  or  opium  or 
many  other  drugs  one  could  apparently 
quite  change  a  man 's  spirit.  The  spirit  then 
depended  upon  matter.  These  were  the  ar- 
guments which  I  used  in  those  days.  I  did 
not  realise  that  it  was  not  the  spirit  that  was 
changed  in  such  cases,  but  the  body  through 
which  the  spirit  worked,  just  as  it  would  be 
no  argument  against  the  existence  of  a  mu- 
sician if  you  tampered  with  his  violin  so  that 


16  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

only  discordant  notes  could  come  through. 
I  was  sufficiently  interested  to  continue  to 
read  such  literature  as  came  in  my  way.  I 
was  amazed  to  find  what  a  number  of  great 
men — men  whose  names  were  to  the  fore  in 
science — thoroughly  believed  that  spirit  was 
independent  of  matter  and  could  survive  it. 
When  I  regarded  Spiritualism  as  a  vulgar 
delusion  of  the  uneducated,  I  could  afford  to 
look  down  upon  it ;  but  when  it  was  endorsed 
by  men  like  Crookes,  whom  I  knew  to  be  the 
most  rising  British  chemist,  by  Wallace, 
who  was  the  rival  of  Darwin,  and  by  Flam- 
marion,  the  best  known  of  astronomers,  I 
could  not  afford  to  dismiss  it.  It  was  all 
very  well  to  throw  down  the  books  of  these 
men  which  contained  their  mature  conclu- 
sions and  careful  investigations,  and  to  say 
"Well,  he  has  one  weak  spot  in  his  brain," 
but  a  man  has  to  be  very  self-satisfied  if  the 
day  does  not  come  when  he  wonders  if  the 
weak  spot  is  not  in  his  own  brain.  For 
some  time  I  was  sustained  in  my  scepticism 
by  the  consideration  that  many  famous  men, 
such  as  Darwin  himself,  Huxley,  Tyndall 
and  Herbert  Spencer,  derided  this  new 


THE  SEARCH  19 

branch  of  knowledge;  but  when  I  learned 
that  their  derision  had  reached  such  a  point 
that  they  would  not  even  examine  it,  and 
that  Spencer  had  declared  in  so  many  words 
that  he  had  decided  against  it  on  a  priori 
grounds,  while  Huxley  had  said  that  it  did 
not  interest  him,  I  was  bound  to  admit  that, 
however  great  they  were  in  science,  their 
action  in  this  respect  was  most  unscientific 
and  dogmatic,  while  the  action  of  those  who 
studied  the  phenomena  and  tried  to  find  out 
the  laws  that  governed  them,  was  following 
the  true  path  which  has  given  us  all  human 
advance  and  knowledge.  So  far  I  had  got 
in  my  reasoning,  so  my  sceptical  position 
was  not  so  solid  as  before. 

It  was  somewhat  reinforced,  however,  by 
my  own  experiences.  It  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  I  was  working  without  a  medium, 
which  is  like  an  astronomer  working  with- 
out a  telescope.  I  have  no  psychical  powers 
myself,  and  those  who  worked  with  me  had 
little  more.  Among  us  we  could  just  muster 
enough  of  the  magnetic  force,  or  whatever 
you  will  call  it,  to  get  the  table  movements 
with  their  suspicious  and  often  stupid  mes- 


20  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

sages.  I  still  have  notes  of  those  sittings 
and  copies  of  some,  at  least,  of  the  messages. 
They  were  not  always  absolutely  stupid. 
For  example,  I  find  that  on  one  occasion,  on 
my  asking  some  test  question,  such  as  how 
many  coins  I  had  in  my  pocket,  the  table 
spelt  out:  "We  are  here  to  educate  and  to 
elevate,  not  to  guess  riddles. "  And  then: 
"The  religious  frame  of  mind,  not  the  criti- 
cal, is  what  we  wish  to  inculcate. ' '  Now,  no 
one  could  say  that  that  was  a  puerile  mes- 
sage. On  the  other  hand,  I  was  always 
haunted  by  the  fear  of  involuntary  pressure 
from  the  hands  of  the  sitters.  Then  there 
came  an  incident  which  puzzled  and  dis- 
gusted me  very  much.  We  had  very  good 
conditions  one  evening,  and  an  amount  of 
movement  which  seemed  quite  independent 
of  our  pressure.  Long  and  detailed  mes- 
sages came  through,  which  purported  to  be 
from  a  spirit  who  gave  his  name  and  said 
he  was  a  commercial  traveller  who  had  lost 
his  life  in  a  recent  fire  at  a  theatre  at  Exeter. 
All  the  details  were  exact,  and  he  implored 
us  to  write  to  his  family,  who  lived,  he  said, 
at  a  place  called  Slattenmere,  in  Cumber- 


THE  SEARCH  21 

land.  I  did  so,  but  my  letter  came  back,  ap- 
propriately enough,  through  the  dead  letter 
office.  To  this  day  I  do  not  know  whether 
we  were  deceived,  or  whether  there  was  some 
mistake  in  the  name  of  the  place ;  but  there 
are  the  facts,  and  I  was  so  disgusted  that  for 
some  time  my  interest  in  the  whole  subject 
waned.  It  was  one  thing  to  study  a  subject, 
but  when  the  subject  began  to  play  elab- 
orate practical  jokes  it  seemed  time  to  call  a 
halt.  If  there  is  such  a  place  as  Slatten- 
mere  in  the  world  I  should  even  now  be  glad 
to  know  it. 

I  was  in  practice  in  Southsea  at  this  time, 
and  dwelling  there  was  General  Drayson, 
a  man  of  very  remarkable  character,  and 
one  of  the  pioneers  of  Spiritualism  in  this 
country.  To  him  I  went  with  my  difficulties, 
and  he  listened  to  them  very  patiently.  He 
made  light  of  my  criticism  of  the  foolish  na- 
ture of  many  of  these  messages,  and  of  the 
absolute  falseness  of  some.  "You  have 
not  got  the  fundamental  truth  into  your 
head,"  said  he.  "That  truth  is,  that  every 
spirit  in  the  flesh  passes  over  to  the  next 
world  exactly  as  it  is,  with  no  change  what- 


ftft  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

ever.  This  world  is  full  of  weak  or  f oolisli 
people.  So  is  the  next.  You  need  not  mix 
with  them,  any  more  than  you  do  in  this 
world.  One  chooses  one's  companions. 
But  suppose  a  man  in  this  world,  who  had 
lived  in  his  house  alone  and  never  mixed 
with  his  fellows,  was  at  last  to  put  his  head 
out  of  the  window  to  see  what  sort  of  place 
it  was,  what  would  happen  ?  Some  naughty 
boy  would  probably  say  something  rude. 
Anyhow,  he  would  see  nothing  of  the  wisdom 
or  greatness  of  the  world.  He  would  draw 
his  head  in  thinking  it  was  a  very  poor  place. 
That  is  just  what  you  have  done.  In  a 
mixed  seance,  with  no  definite  aim,  you 
have  thrust  your  head  into  the  next  world 
and  you  have  met  some  naughty  boys.  Go 
forward  and  try  to  reach  something  better. " 
That  was  General  Dray  son's  explanation, 
and  though  it  did  not  satisfy  me  at  the  time, 
I  think  now  that  it  was  a  rough  approxima- 
tion to  the  truth.  These  were  my  first  steps 
in  Spiritualism.  I  was  still  a  sceptic,  but  at 
least  I  was  an  inquirer,  and  when  I  heard 
some  old-fashioned  critic  saying  that  there 
was  nothing  to  explain,  and  that  it  was  all 


THE  SEARCH  M 

fraud,  or  that  a  conjuror  was  needed  to  show 
it  up,  I  knew  at  least  that  that  was  all  non- 
sense. It  is  true  that  my  own  evidence  up 
to  then  was  not  enough  to  convince  me,  but 
my  reading,  which  was  continuous,  showed 
me  how  deeply  other  men  had  gone  into  it, 
and  I  recognised  that  the  testimony  was  so 
strong  that  no  other  religious  movement  in 
the  world  could  put  forward  anything  to 
compare  with  it.  That  did  not  prove  it  to  be 
true,  but  at  least  it  proved  that  it  must 
be  treated  with  respect  and  could  not  be 
brushed  aside.  Take  a  single  incident  of 
what  Wallace  has  truly  called  a  modern  mir- 
acle. I  choose  it  because  it  is  the  most  in- 
credible. I  allude  to  the  assertion  that  D. 
D.  Home — who,  by  the  way,  was  not,  as  is 
usually  supposed,  a  paid  adventurer,  but  was 
the  nephew  of  the  Earl  of  Home — the  asser- 
tion, I  say,  that  he  floated  out  of  one  window 
and  into  another  at  the  height  of  seventy  feet 
above  the  ground.  I  could  not  believe  it. 
And  yet,  when  I  knew  that  the  fact  was  at- 
tested by  three  eye-witnesses,  who  were  Lord 
Dunraven,  Lord  Lindsay,  and  Captain 
Wynne,  all  men  of  honour  and  repute,  who 


24  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

were  willing  afterwards  to  take  their  oath 
upon  it,  I  could  not  but  admit  that  the  evi- 
dence for  this  was  more  direct  than  for  any 
of  those  far-off  events  which  the  whole  world 
has  agreed  to  accept  as  true. 

I  still  continued  during  these  years  to  hold 
table  seances,  which  sometimes  gave  no  re- 
sults, sometimes  trivial  ones,  and  sometimes 
rather  surprising  ones.  I  have  still  the 
notes  of  these  sittings,  and  I  extract  here  the 
results  of  one  which  were  definite,  and  which 
were  so  unlike  any  conceptions  which  I  held 
of  life  beyond  the  grave  that  they  amused 
rather  than  edified  me  at  the  time.  I  find 
now,  however,  that  they  agree  very  closely 
with  the  revelations  in  Raymond  and  in 
other  later  accounts,  so  that  I  view  them  with 
different  eyes.  I  am  aware  that  all  these  ac- 
counts of  life  beyond  the  grave  differ  in  de- 
tail— I  suppose  any  of  our  accounts  of  the 
present  life  would  differ  in  detail — but  in  the 
main  there  is  a  very  great  resemblance, 
which  in  this  instance  was  very  far  from  the 
conception  either  of  myself  or  of  either  of 
the  two  ladies  who  made  up  the  circle.  Two 
communicators  sent  messages,  the  first  of 


THE  SEARCH  25 

whom  spelt  out  as  a  name  "  Dorothy  Pos- 
tlethwaite,"  a  name  unknown  to  any  of  us. 
She  said  she  died  at  Melbourne  five  years  be- 
fore, at  the  age  of  sixteen,  that  she  was  now 
happy,  that  she  had  work  to  do,  and  that 
she  had  been  at  the  same  school  as  one  of  the 
ladies.  On  my  asking  that  lady  to  raise  her 
hands  and  give  a  succession  of  names,  the 
table  tilted  at  the  correct  name  of  the  head 
mistress  of  the  school.  This  seemed  in  the 
nature  of  a  test.  She  went  on  to  say  that  the 
sphere  she  inhabited  was  all  round  the  earth ; 
that  she  knew  about  the  planets ;  that  Mars 
was  inhabited  by  a  race  more  advanced  than 
us,  and  that  the  canals  were  artificial ;  there 
was  no  bodily  pain  in  her  sphere,  but  there 
could  be  mental  anxiety;  they  were  gov- 
erned; they  took  nourishment;  she  had  been 
a  Catholic  and  was  still  a  Catholic,  but  had 
not  fared  better  than  the  Protestants ;  there 
were  Buddhists  and  Mohammedans  in  her 
sphere,  but  all  fared  alike;  she  had  never 
seen  Christ  and  knew  no  more  about  Him 
than  on  earth,  but  believed  in  His  influence ; 
spirits  prayed  and  they  died  in  their  new 
sphere  before  entering  another;  they  had 


*J  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

pleasures — music  was  among  them.  It  was 
a  place  of  light  and  of  laughter.  She  added 
that  they  had  no  rich  or  poor,  and  that  the 
general  conditions  were  far  happier  than  on 
earth. 

This  lady  bade  us  good-night,  and  immedi- 
ately the  table  was  seized  by  a  much  more 
robust  influence,  which  dashed  it  about  very 
violently.  In  answer  to  my  questions  it 
claimed  to  be  the  spirit  of  one  whom  I  will 
call  Dodd,  who  was  a  famous  cricketer,  and 
with  whom  I  had  some  serious  conversation 
in  Cairo  before  he  went  up  the  Nile,  where 
be  met  his  death  in  the  Dongolese  Expedi- 
tion. We  have  now,  I  may  remark,  come  to 
the  year  1896  in  my  experiences.  Dodd  was 
not  known  to  either  lady.  I  began  to  ask 
him  questions  exactly  as  if  he  were  seated 
before  me,  and  he  sent  his  answers  back  with 
great  speed  and  decision.  The  answers  were 
often  quite  opposed  to  what  I  expected,  so 
that  I  could  not  believe  that  I  was  influenc- 
ing them.  He  said  that  he  was  happy,  that 
he  did  not  wish  to  return  to  earth.  He  had 
been  a  free-thinker,  but  had  not  suffered  in 
the  next  life  for  that  reason.  Prayer,  how- 


THE  SEARCH  JT7 

ever,  was  a  good  thing,  as  keeping  us  in  touch 
with  the  spiritual  world.  If  he  had  prayed 
more  he  would  have  been  higher  in  the  spirit 
world. 

This,  I  may  remark,  seemed  rather  in  con- 
flict with  his  assertion  that  he  had  not  suf- 
fered through  being  a  free-thinker,  and  yet, 
of  course,  many  men  neglect  prayer  who  are 
not  free-thinkers. 

His  death  was  painless.  He  remembered 
the  death  of  Polwhele,  a  young  officer  who 
died  before  him.  When  he  (Dodd)  died  he 
had  found  people  to  welcome  him,  but  Pol- 
whele had  not  been  among  them. 

He  had  work  to  do.  He  was  aware  of  the 
Fall  of  Dongola,  but  had  not  been  present 
in  spirit  at  the  banquet  at  Cairo  afterwards. 
He  knew  more  than  he  did  in  life.  He  re- 
membered our  conversation  in  Cairo.  Du- 
ration of  life  in  the  next  sphere  was  shorter 
than  on  earth.  He  had  not  seen  General 
Gordon,  nor  any  other  famous  spirit. 
Spirits  lived  in  families  and  in  communi- 
ties. Married  people  did  not  necessarily 
meet  again,  but  those  who  loved  each  other 
did  meet  again. 


28 

I  have  given  this  synopsis  of  a  communi- 
cation to  show  the  kind  of  thing  we  got — 
though  this  was  a  very  favourable  specimen, 
both  for  length  and  for  coherence.  It  shows 
that  it  is  not  just  to  say,  as  many  critics 
say,  that  nothing  but  folly  comes  through. 
There  was  no  folly  here  unless  we  call  every- 
thing folly  which  does  not  agree  with  pre- 
conceived ideas.  On  the  other  hand,  what 
proof  was  there  that  these  statements  were 
true?  I  could  see  no  such  proof,  and  they 
simply  left  me  bewildered.  Now,  with  a 
larger  experience,  in  which  I  find  that  the 
same  sort  of  information  has  come  to  very 
many  people  independently  in  many  lands, 
I  think  that  the  agreement  of  the  witnesses 
does,  as  in  all  cases  of  evidence,  constitute 
some  argument  for  their  truth.  At  the  time 
I  could  not  fit  such  a  conception  of  the  future 
world  into  my  own  scheme  of  philosophy, 
and  I  merely  noted  it  and  passed  on. 

I  continued  to  read  many  books  upon  the 
subject  and  to  appreciate  more  and  more 
what  a  cloud  of  witnesses  existed,  and  how 
careful  their  observations  had  been.  This 
impressed  my  mind  very  much  more  than  the 


THE  SEARCH  29 

limited  phenomena  which  came  within  the 
reach  of  our  circle.  Then  or  afterwards  I 
read  a  book  by  Monsieur  Jacolliot  upon  oc- 
cult phenomena  in  India.  Jacolliot  was 
Chief  Judge  of  the  French  Colony  of  Cran- 
denagur,  with  a  very  judicial  mind,  but 
rather  biassed  against  spiritualism.  He 
conducted  a  series  of  experiments  with  na- 
tive fakirs,  who  gave  him  their  confidence 
because  he  was  a  sympathetic  man  and 
spoke  their  language.  He  describes  the 
pains  he  took  to  eliminate  fraud.  To  cut  a 
long  story  short  he  found  among  them  every 
phenomenon  of  advanced  European  medi- 
umship,  everything  which  Home,  for  ex- 
ample, had  ever  done.  He  got  levitation  of 
the  body,  the  handling  of  fire,  movement  of 
articles  at  a  distance,  rapid  growth  of  plants, 
raising  of  tables.  Their  explanation  of  these 
phenomena  was  that  they  were  done  by  the 
iPitris  or  spirits,  and  their  only  difference 
in  procedure  from  ours  seemed  to  be  that 
they  made  more  use  of  direct  evocation. 
They  claimed  that  these  powers  were  handed 
down  from  time  immemorial  and  traced  back 
to  the  Chaldees.  All  this  impressed  me  very 


§0  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

much,  as  here,  independently,  we  had  ex- 
actly the  same  results,  without  any  question 
of  American  frauds,  or  modern  vulgarity, 
which  were  so  often  raised  against  similar 
phenomena  in  Europe. 

My  mind  was  also  influenced  about  this 
time  by  the  report  of  the  Dialectical  Society, 
although  this  Report  had  been  presented  as 
far  back  as  1869.  It  is  a  very  cogent  paper, 
and  though  it  was  received  with  a  chorus  of 
ridicule  by  the  ignorant  and  materialistic 
papers  of  those  days,  it  was  a  document  of 
great  value.  The  Society  was  formed  by  a 
number  of  people  of  good  standing  and  open 
mind  to  enquire  into  the  physical  phenomena 
of  Spiritualism.  A  full  account  of  their  ex- 
periences and  of  their  elaborate  precautions 
against  fraud  are  given.  After  reading  the 
evidence,  one  fails  to  see  how  they  could  have 
come  to  any  other  conclusion  than  the  one 
attained,  namely,  that  the  phenomena  were 
undoubtedly  genuine,  and  that  they  pointed 
to  laws  and  forces  which  had  not  been  ex- 
plored by  Science.  It  is  a  most  singular 
fact  that  if  the  verdict  had  been  against  spir- 
itualism, it  would  certainly  have  been  hailed 


THE  SEARCH  SI 

as  the  death  blow  of  the  movement,  whereas 
being  an  endorsement  of  the  phenomena  it 
met  with  nothing  by  ridicule.  This  has  been 
the  fate  of  a  number  of  inquiries  since  those 
conducted  locally  at  Hydesville  in  1848,  or 
that  which  followed  when  Professor  Hare 
of  Philadelphia,  like  Saint  Paul,  started 
forth  to  oppose  but  was  forced  to  yield  to 
the  truth. 

About  1891,  I  had  joined  the  Psychical 
Research  Society  and  had  the  advantage  of 
reading  all  their  reports.  The  world  owes 
a  great  deal  to  the  unwearied  diligence  of  the 
Society,  and  to  its  sobriety  of  statement, 
though  I  will  admit  that  the  latter  makes 
one  impatient  at  times,  and  one  feels  that  in 
their  desire  to  avoid  sensationalism  they  dis- 
courage the  world  from  knowing  and  using 
the  splendid  work  which  they  are  doing. 
Their  semi-scientific  terminology  also  chokes 
off  the  ordinary  reader,  and  one  might  say 
sometimes  after  reading  their  articles  what 
an  American  trapper  in  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains said  to  me  about  some  University  man 
whom  he  had  been  escorting  for  the  season. 
"He  was  that  clever,"  he  said,  "that  you 


82  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

could  not  understand  what  he  said."  But 
in  spite  of  these  little  peculiarities  all  of  us 
who  have  wanted  light  in  the  darkness  have 
found  it  by  the  methodical,  never-tiring 
work  of  the  Society.  Its  influence  was  one 
of  the  powers  which  now  helped  me  to  shape 
my  thoughts.  There  was  another,  however, 
which  made  a  deep  impression  upon  me.  Up 
to  now  I  had  read  all  the  wonderful  experi- 
ences of  great  experimenters,  but  I  had 
never  come  across  any  effort  upon  their  part 
to  build  up  some  system  which  would  cover 
and  contain  them  all.  Now  I  read  that  mon- 
umental book,  Myers'  Human  Personality, 
a  great  root  book  from  which  a  whole  tree 
of  knowledge  will  grow.  In  this  book 
Myers  was  unable  to  get  any  formula  which 
covered  all  the  phenomena  called  "spirit- 
ual," but  in  discussing  that  action  of  mind 
upon  mind  which  he  has  himself  called  telep- 
athy he  completely  proved  his  point,  and  he 
worked  it  out  so  thoroughly  with  so  many 
examples,  that,  save  for  those  who  were  wil- 
fully blind  to  the  evidence,  it  took  its  place 
henceforth  as  a  scientific  fact.  But  this  was 


THE  SEARCH  85 

an  enormous  advance.  If  mind  could  act 
upon  mind  at  a  distance,  then  there  were 
some  human  powers  which  were  quite  dif- 
ferent to  matter  as  we  had  always  under- 
stood it.  The  ground  was  cut  from  under 
the  feet  of  the  materialist,  and  my  old  posi- 
tion had  been  destroyed.  I  had  said  that 
the  flame  could  not  exist  when  the  candle 
was  gone.  But  here  was  the  flame  a  long 
way  off  the  candle,  acting  upon  its  own.  The 
analogy  was  clearly  a  false  analogy.  If  the 
mind,  the  spirit,  the  intelligence  of  man 
could  operate  at  a  distance  from  the  body, 
then  it  was  a  thing  to  that  extent  separate 
from  the  body.  Why  then  should  it  not 
exist  on  its  own  when  the  body  was  de- 
stroyed? Not  only  did  impressions  come 
from  a  distance  in  the  case  of  those  who  were 
just  dead,  but  the  same  evidence  proved  that 
actual  appearances  of  the  dead  person  came 
with  them,  showing  that  the  impressions 
were  carried  by  something  which  was  ex- 
actly like  the  body,  and  yet  acted  independ- 
ently and  survived  the  death  of  the  body. 
The  chain  of  evidence  between  the  simplest 


84  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

cases  of  thought-reading  at  one  end,  and  the 
actual  manifestation  of  the  spirit  independ- 
ently of  the  body  at  the  other,  was  one  un- 
broken chain,  each  phase  leading  to  the 
other,  and  this  fact  seemed  to  me  to  bring 
the  first  signs  of  systematic  science  and  order 
into  what  had  been  a  mere  collection  of  be- 
wildering and  more  or  less  unrelated  facts. 
About  this  time  I  had  an  interesting  ex- 
perience, for  I  was  one  of  three  delegates 
sent  by  the  Psychical  Society  to  sit  up  in  a 
haunted  house.  It  was  one  of  these  polter- 
geist cases,  where  noises  and  foolish  tricks 
had  gone  on  for  some  years,  very  much  like 
the  classical  case  of  John  Wesley's  family 
at  Epworth  in  1726,  or  the  case  of  the  Fox 
family  at  Hydesville  near  Rochester  in  1848, 
which  was  the  starting-point  of  modern 
spiritualism.  Nothing  sensational  came  of 
our  journey,  and  yet  it  was  not  entirely  bar- 
ren. On  the  first  night  nothing  occurred. 
On  the  second,  there  were  tremendous  noises, 
sounds  like  someone  beating  a  table  with  a 
stick.  We  had,  of  course,  taken  every  pre- 
caution, and  we  could  not  explain  the  noises ; 
but  at  the  same  time  we  could  not  swear  that 


THE  SEARCH  35 

some  ingenious  practical  joke  had  not  been 
played  upon  us.  There  the  matter  ended  for 
the  time.  Some  years  afterwards,  however, 
I  met  a  member  of  the  family  who  occupied 
the  house,  and  he  told  me  that  after  our  visit 
the  bones  of  a  child,  evidently  long  buried, 
had  been  dug  up  in  the  garden.  You  must 
admit  that  this  was  very  remarkable. 
Haunted  houses  are  rare,  and  houses  with 
buried  human  beings  in  their  gardens  are 
also,  we  will  hope,  rare.  That  they  should 
have  both  united  in  one  house  is  surely  some 
argument  for  the  truth  of  the  phenomena. 
It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  in  the  case 
of  the  Fox  family  there  was  also  some  word 
of  human  bones  and  evidence  of  murder  be- 
ing found  in  the  cellar,  though  an  actual 
crime  was  never  established.  I  have  little 
doubt  that  if  the  Wesley  family  could  have 
got  upon  speaking  terms  with  their  perse- 
cutor, they  would  also  have  come  upon  some 
motive  for  the  persecution.  It  almost  seems 
as  if  a  life  cut  suddenly  and  violently  short 
had  some  store  of  unspent  vitality  which 
could  still  manifest  itself  in  a  strange,  mis- 
chievous fashion.  Later  I  had  another  sin- 


86  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

gular  personal  experience  of  this  sort  whien 
I  may  describe  at  the  end  of  this  argument.1 
From  this  period  until  the  time  of  the 
War  I  continued  in  the  leisure  hours  of  a 
very  busy  life  to  devote  attention  to  this  sub- 
ject. I  had  experience  of  one  series  of 
seances  with  very  amazing  results,  including 
several  materializations  seen  in  dim  light. 
As  the  medium  was  detected  in  trickery 
shortly  afterwards  I  wiped  these  off  entirely 
as  evidence.  At  the  same  time  I  think  that 
the  presumption  is  very  clear,  that  in  the 
case  of  some  mediums  like  Eusapia  Palla- 
dino  they  may  be  guilty  of  trickery  when 
their  powers  fail  them,  and  yet  at  other 
times  have  very  genuine  gifts.  Mediumship 
in  its  lowest  forms  is  a  purely  physical  gift 
with  no  relation  to  morality  and  in  many 
cases  it  is  intermittent  and  cannot  be  con- 
trolled at  will.  Eusapia  was  at  least  twice 
convicted  of  very  clumsy  and  foolish  fraud, 
whereas  she  several  times  sustained  long  ex- 
aminations under  every  possible  test  condi- 
tion at  the  hands  of  scientific  committees 
which  contained  some  of  the  best  names  of 

iVide  Appendix  III. 


THE  SEARCH  87 

France,  Italy,  and  England.  However,  I 
personally  prefer  to  cut  my  experience  with 
a  discredited  medium  out  of  my  record,  and 
I  think  that  all  physical  phenomena  pro- 
duced in  the  dark  must  necessarily  lose  much 
of  their  value,  unless  they  are  accompanied 
by  evidential  messages  as  well.  It  is  the  cus- 
tom of  our  eiitics  to  assume  that  if  you  cut 
out  the  mediums  who  got  into  trouble  you 
would  have  to  cut  out  nearly  all  your  evi- 
dence. That  is  not  so  at  all.  Up  to  the  time 
of  this  incident  I  had  never  sat  with  a  pro- 
fessional medium  at  all,  and  yet  I  had  cer- 
tainly accumulated  some  evidence.  The 
greatest  medium  of  all,  Mr.  D.  D.  Home, 
showed  his  phenomena  in  broad  daylight, 
and  was  ready  to  submit  to  every  test  and  no 
charge  of  trickery  was  ever  substantiated 
against  him.  So  it  was  with  many  others. 
It  is  only  fair  to  state  in  addition  that  when 
a  public  medium  is  a  fair  mark  for  notoriety 
hunters,  for  amateur  detectives  and  for  sen- 
sational reporters,  and  when  he  is  dealing 
with  obscure  elusive  phenomena  and  has  to 
defend  himself  before  juries  and  judges  who, 
as  a  rule,  know  nothing  about  the  conditions 


88  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

which  influence  the  phenomena,  it  would  be 
wonderful  if  a  man  could  get  through  with- 
out an  occasional  scandal.  At  the  same  time 
the  whole  system  of  paying  by  results,  which 
is  practically  the  present  system,  since  if  a 
medium  never  gets  results  he  would  soon  get 
no  payments,  is  a  vicious  one.  It  is  only 
when  the  professional  medium  can  be  guar- 
anteed an  annuity  which  will  be  independent 
of  results,  that  we  can  eliminate  the  strong 
temptation  to  substitute  pretended  phenom- 
ena when  the  real  ones  are  wanting. 

I  have  now  traced  my  own  evolution  of 
thought  up  to  the  time  of  the  War.  I  can 
claim,  I  hope,  that  it  was  deliberate  and 
showed  no  traces  of  that  credulity  with 
which  our  opponents  charge  us.  It  was  too 
deliberate,  for  I  was  culpably  slow  in  throw- 
ing any  small  influence  I  may  possess  into 
the  scale  of  truth.  I  might  have  drifted  on 
for  my  whole  life  as  a  psychical  Researcher, 
showing  a  sympathetic,  but  more  or  less  dil- 
ettante attitude  towards  the  whole  subject, 
as  if  we  were  arguing  about  some  imper- 
sonal thing  such  as  the  existence  of  Atlantis 
or  the  Baconian  controversy.  But  the  War 


THE  SEARCH  89 

came,  and  when  the  War  came  it  brought 
earnestness  into  all  our  souls  and  made  us 
look  more  closely  at  our  own  beliefs  and  re- 
assess their  values.  In  the  presence  of  an 
agonized  world,  hearing  every  day  of  the 
deaths  of  the  flower  of  our  race  in  the  first 
promise  of  their  unfulfilled  youth,  seeing 
around  one  the  wives  and  mothers  who  had 
no  clear  conception  whither  their  loved  ones 
had  gone  to,  I  seemed  suddenly  to  see  that 
this  subject  with  which  I  had  so  long  dallied 
was  not  merely  a  study  of  a  force  outside  the 
rules  of  science,  but  that  it  was  really  some- 
thing tremendous,  a  breaking  down  of  the 
walls  between  two  worlds,  a  direct  undeni- 
able message  from  beyond,  a  call  of  hope  and 
of  guidance  to  the  human  race  at  the  time  of 
its  deepest  affliction.  The  objective  side  of 
it  ceased  to  interest  for  having  made  up  one's 
mind  that  it  was  true  there  was  an  end  of 
the  matter.  The  religious  side  of  it  was 
clearly  of  infinitely  greater  importance. 
The  telephone  bell  is  in  itself  a  very  childish 
affair,  but  it  may  be  the  signal  for  a  very 
vital  message.  It  seemed  that  all  these  phe- 
nomena, large  and  small,  had  been  the  tele- 


40  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

phone  bells  which,  senseless  in  themselves, 
had  signalled  to  the  human  race:  "Rouse 
yourselves!  Stand  by!  Be  at  attention! 
Here  are  signs  for  you.  They  will  lead  up 
to  the  message  which  God  wishes  to  send." 
It  was  the  message  not  the  signs  which  really 
counted.  A  new  revelation  seemed  to  be  in 
the  course  of  delivery  to  the  human  race, 
though  how  far  it  was  still  in  what  may  be 
called  the  John-the-Baptist  stage,  and  how 
far  some  greater  fulness  and  clearness  might 
be  expected  hereafter,  was  more  than  any 
man  can  say.  My  point  is,  that  the  physi- 
cal phenomena  which  have  been  proved  up  to 
the  hilt  for  all  who  care  to  examine  the  evi- 
dence, are  really  of  no  account,  and  that  their 
real  value  consists  in  the  fact  that  they  sup- 
port and  give  objective  reality  to  an  im- 
mense body  of  knowledge  which  must  deeply 
modify  our  previous  religious  views,  and 
must,  when  properly  understood  and  digest- 
ed, make  religion  a  very  real  thing,  no  longer 
a  matter  of  faith,  but  a  matter  of  actual  ex- 
perience and  fact.  It  is  to  this  side  of  the 
question  that  I  will  now  turn,  but  I  must  add 
to  my  previous  remarks  about  personal  ex- 


THE  SEARCH  41 

perience  that,  since  the  War,  I  have  had 
some  very  exceptional  opportunities  of  con- 
firming all  the  views  which  I  had  already 
formed  as  to  the  truth  of  the  general  facts 
upon  which  my  views  are  founded. 

These  opportunities  came  through  the  fact 
that  a  lady  who  lived  with  us,  a  Miss  L.  S., 
developed  the  power  of  automatic  writing. 
Of  all  forms  of  mediumship,  this  seems  to 
me  to  be  the  one  which  should  be  tested  most 
rigidly,  as  it  lends  itself  very  easily  not  so 
much  to  deception  as  to  self-deception,  which 
is  a  more  subtle  and  dangerous  thing.  Is 
the  lady  herself  writing,  or  is  there,  as  she 
avers,  a  power  that  controls  her,  even  as  the 
chronicler  of  the  Jews  in  the  Bible  averred 
that  he  was  controlled?  In  the  case  of  L. 
S.  there  is  no  denying  that  some  messages 
proved  to  be  not  true — especially  in  the  mat- 
ter of  time  they  were  quite  unreliable.  But 
on  the  other  hand,  the  numbers  which  did 
come  true  were  far  beyond  what  any  guess- 
ing or  coincidence  could  account  for.  Thus, 
when  the  Lusitania  was  sunk  and  the  morn- 
ing papers  here  announced  that  so  far  as 
known  there  was  no  loss  of  life,  the  medium 


42  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

at  once  wrote:  "It  is  terrible,  terrible — 
and  will  have  a  great  influence  on  the  war." 
Since  it  was  the  first  strong  impulse  which 
turned  America  towards  the  war,  the  mes- 
sage was  true  in  both  respects.  Again,  she 
foretold  the  arrival  of  an  important  tele- 
gram upon  a  certain  day,  and  even  gave  the 
name  of  the  deliverer  of  it — a  most  unlikely 
person.  Altogether,  no  one  could  doubt  the 
reality  of  her  inspiration,  though  the  lapses 
were  notable.  It  was  like  getting  a  good 
message  through  a  very  imperfect  telephone. 
One  other  incident  of  the  early  war  days 
stands  out  in  my  memory.  A  lady  in  whom 
I  was  interested  had  died  in  a  provincial 
town.  She  was  a  chronic  invalid  and  mor- 
phia was  found  by  her  bedside.  There  was 
an  inquest  with  an  open  verdict.  Eight  days 
later  I  went  to  have  a  sitting  with  Mr.  Vout 
Peters.  After  giving  me  a  good  deal  which 
was  vague  and  irrelevant,  he  suddenly  said : 
"  There  is  a  lady  here.  She  is  leaning  upon 
an  older  woman.  She  keeps  saying  'Mor- 
phia/ Three  times  she  has  said  it.  Her 
mind  was  clouded.  She  did  not  mean  it. 
Morphia!"  Those  were  almost  his  exact 


THE  SEARCH  43 

words.  Telepathy  was  out  of  the  question, 
for  I  had  entirely  other  thoughts  in  my  mind 
at  the  time  and  was  expecting  no  such  mes- 
sage. 

Apart  from  personal  experiences,  this 
movement  must  gain  great  additional  solid- 
ity from  the  wonderful  literature  which  has 
sprung  up  around  it  during  the  last  few 
years.  If  no  other  spiritual  books  were  in 
existence  than  five  which  have  appeared  in 
the  last  year  or  so — I  allude  to  Professor 
Lodge's  Raymond,  Arthur  Hill's  Psychical 
Investigations,  Professor  Crawford's  Real- 
ity of  Psychical  Phenomena,  Professor  Bar- 
rett's  Threshold  of  the  Unseen,  and  Gerald 
Balfour 's  Ear  of  Dionysius — those  five  alone 
would,  in  my  opinion,  be  sufficient  to  estab- 
lish the  facts  for  any  reasonable  enquirer. 

Before  going  into  this  question  of  a  new 
religious  revelation,  how  it  is  reached,  and 
what  it  consists  of,  I  would  say  a  word  upon 
one  other  subject.  There  have  always  been 
two  lines  of  attack  by  our  opponents.  The 
one  is  that  our  facts  are  not  true.  This  I 
have  dealt  with.  The  other  is  that  we  are 
upon  forbidden  ground  and  should  come  off 


44  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

it  and  leave  it  alone.  As  I  started  from  a 
position  of  comparative  materialism,  this  ob- 
jection has  never  had  any  meaning  for  me, 
but  to  others  I  would  submit  one  or  two  con- 
siderations. The  chief  is  that  God  has  given 
us  no  power  at  all  which  is  under  no  circum- 
stances to  be  used.  The  fact  that  we  possess 
it  is  in  itself  proof  that  it  is  our  bounden 
duty  to  study  and  to  develop  it.  It  is  true 
that  this,  like  every  other  power,  may  be 
abused  if  we  lose  our  general  sense  of  pro- 
portion and  of  reason.  But  I  repeat  that  its 
mere  possession  is  a  strong  reason  why  it  is 
lawful  and  binding  that  it  be  used. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  this  cry  of 
illicit  knowledge,  backed  by  more  or  less  ap- 
propriate texts,  has  been  used  against  every 
advance  of  human  knowledge.  It  was  used 
against  the  new  astronomy,  and  Galileo  had 
actually  to  recant.  It  was  used  against  Gal- 
vani  and  electricity.  It  was  used  against 
Darwin,  who  would  certainly  have  been 
burned  had  he  lived  a  few  centuries  before. 
It  was  even  used  against  Simpson's  use  of 
chloroform  in  child-birth,  on  the  ground  that 
the  Bible  declared  "in  pain  shall  ye  'bring 


THE  SEARCH  45 

them  forth."  Surely  a  plea  which  has  been 
made  so  often,  and  so  often  abandoned,  can- 
not be  regarded  very  seriously. 

To  those,  however,  to  whom  the  theologi- 
cal aspect  is  still  a  stumbling  block,  I  would 
recommend  the  reading  of  two  short  books, 
each  of  them  by  clergymen.  The  one  is  the 
Eev.  Fielding  Quid's  Is  Spiritualism  of  the 
Devil,  purchasable  for  twopence ;  the  other  is 
the  Eev.  Arthur  Chambers'  Our  Self  After 
Death.  I  can  also  recommend  the  Rev. 
Charles  Tweedale's  writings  upon  the  sub- 
ject. I  may  add  that  when  I  first  began  to 
make  public  my  own  views,  one  of  the  first 
letters  of  sympathy  which  I  received  was 
from  the  late  Archdeacon  Wilberforce. 

There  are  some  theologians  who  are  not 
only  opposed  to  such  a  cult,  but  who  go  the 
length  of  saying  that  the  phenomena  and 
messages  come  from  fiends  who  personate 
our  dead,  or  pretend  to  be  heavenly  teachers. 
It  is  difficult  to  think  that  those  who  hold 
this  view  have  ever  had  any  personal  experi- 
ence of  the  consoling  and  uplifting  effect  of 
such  communications  upon  the  recipient. 
Euskin  has  left  it  on  record  that  his  convic- 


46  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

tion  of  a  future  life  came  from  Spiritualism, 
though  he  somewhat  ungratefully  and  illog- 
ically  added  that  having  got  that,  he  wished 
to  have  no  more  to  do  with  it.  There  are 
many,  however — quorum  pars  parva  sum — 
who  without  any  reserve  can  declare  that 
they  were  turned  from  materialism  to  a  be- 
lief in  future  life,  with  all  that  that  implies, 
by  the  study  of  this  subject.  If  this  be  the 
devil 's  work  one  can  only  say  that  the  devil 
seems  to  be  a  very  bungling  workman  and 
to  get  results  very  far  from  what  he  might 
be  expected  to  desire. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  REVELATION 

I  CAN  now  turn  with  some  relief  to  a  more 
impersonal  view  of  this  great  subject.  Al- 
lusion has  been  made  to  a  body  of  fresh  doc- 
trine. Whence  does  this  come?  It  comes 
in  the  main  through  automatic  writing 
where  the  hand  of  the  human  medium  is  con- 
trolled, either  by  an  alleged  dead  human  be- 
ing, as  in  the  case  of  Miss  Julia  Ames,  or 
by  an  alleged  higher  teacher,  as  in  that  of  Mr. 
Stainton  Moses.  These  written  communi- 
cations are  supplemented  by  a  vast  number 
of  trance  utterances,  and  by  the  verbal  mes- 
sages of  spirits,  given  through  the  lips  of 
mediums.  Sometimes  it  has  even  come  by 
direct  voices,  as  in  the  numerous  cases  de- 
tailed by  Admiral  Usborne  Moore  in  his  book 
The  Voices.  Occasionally  it  has  gome 
through  the  family  circle  and  table-tilting, 

as,  for  example,  in  the  two  cases  I  have  pre- 
47 


48  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

viously  detailed  within  my  own  experience. 
Sometimes,  as  in  a  case  recorded  by  Mrs.  de 
Morgan,  it  has  come  through  the  hand  of  a 
child. 

Now,  of  course,  we  are  at  once  confronted 
with  the  obvious  objection — how  do  we  know 
that  these  messages  are  really  from  beyond  I 
How  do  we  know  that  the  medium  is  not  con- 
sciously writing,  or  if  that  be  improbable, 
that  he  or  she  is  unconsciously  writing  them 
by  his  or  her  own  higher  self?  This  is  a 
perfectly  just  criticism,  and  it  is  one  which 
we  must  rigorously  apply  in  every  case, 
since  if  the  whole  world  is  to  become  full  of 
minor  prophets,  each  of  them  stating  their 
own  views  of  the  religious  state  with  no 
proof  save  their  own  assertion,  we  should, 
indeed,  be  back  in  the  dark  ages  of  implicit 
faith.  The  answer  must  be  that  we  require 
signs  which  we  can  test  before  we  accept  as- 
sertions which  we  cannot  test.  In  old  days 
they  demanded  a  sign  from  a  prophet,  and  it 
was  a  perfectly  reasonable  request,  and  still 
holds  good.  If  a  person  comes  to  me  with  an 
account  of  life  in  some  further  world,  and 
has  no  credentials  save  his  own  assertion,  I 


THE  REVELATION  49 

would  rather  have  it  in  my  waste-paper- 
basket  than  on  my  study  table.  Life  is  too 
short  to  weigh  the  merits  of  such  produc- 
tions. But  if,  as  in  the  case  of  Stainton 
Moses,  with  his  Spirit  Teachings,  the  doc- 
trines which  are  said  to  come  from  beyond 
are  accompanied  with  a  great  number  of  ab- 
normal gifts — and  Stainton  Moses  was  one 
of  the  greatest  mediums  in  all  ways  that 
England  has  ever  produced — then  I  look 
upon  the  matter  in  a  more  serious  light. 
Again,  if  Miss  Julia  Ames  can  tell  Mr.  Stead 
things  in  her  own  earth  life  of  which  he 
could  not  have  cognisance,  and  if  those 
things  are  shown,  when  tested,  to  be  true, 
then  one  is  more  inclined  to  think  that  those 
things  which  cannot  be  tested  are  true  also. 
Or  once  again,  if  Eaymond  can  tell  us  of  a 
photograph  no  copy  of  which  had  reached 
England,  and  which  proved  to  be  exactly  as 
he  described  it,  and  if  he  can  give  us,  through 
the  lips  of  strangers,  all  sorts  of  details  of 
his  home  life,  which  his  own  relatives  had  to 
verify  before  they  found  them  to  be  true,  is 
it  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  he  is  fairly 
accurate  in  his  description  of  his  own  ex- 


50  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

periences  and  state  of  life  at  the  very  mo- 
ment at  which  he  is  communicating?  Or 
when  Mr.  Arthur  Hill  receives  messages 
from  folk  of  whom  he  never  heard,  and 
afterwards  verifies  that  they  are  true  in 
every  detail,  is  it  not  a  fair  inference  that 
they  are  speaking  truths  also  when  they  give 
any  light  upon  their  present  condition  ?  The 
cases  are  manifold,  and  I  mention  only  a 
few  of  them,  but  my  point  is  that  the  whole 
of  this  system,  from  the  lowest  physical  phe- 
nomenon of  a  table-rap  up  to  the  most  in- 
spired utterance  of  a  prophet,  is  one  com- 
plete whole,  each  link  attached  to  the  next 
one,  and  that  when  the  humbler  end  of  that 
chain  was  placed  in  the  hand  of  humanity,  it 
was  in  order  that  they  might,  by  diligence 
and  reason,  feel  their  way  up  it  until  they 
reached  the  revelation  which  waited  in  the 
end.  Do  not  sneer  at  the  humble  begin- 
nings, the  heaving  table  or  the  flying  tam- 
bourine, however  much  such  phenomena 
may  have  been  abused  or  simulated,  but  re- 
member that  a  falling  apple  taught  us  grav- 
ity, a  boiling  kettle  brought  us  the  steam  en- 
gine, and  the  twitching  leg  of  a  frog  opened 


THE  REVELATION  51 

up  the  train  of  thought  and  experiment 
which  gave  us  electricity.  So  the  lowly 
manifestations  of  Hydesville  have  ripened 
into  results  which  have  engaged  the  finest 
group  of  intellects  in  this  country  during  the 
last  twenty  years,  and  which  are  destined,  in 
my  opinion,  to  bring  about  far  the  greatest 
development  of  human  experience  which  the 
world  has  ever  seen, 

It  has  been  asserted  by  men  for  whose 
opinion  I  have  a  deep  regard — notably  by 
Sir  William  Barratt — that  psychical  re- 
search is  quite  distinct  from  religion.  Cer- 
tainly it  is  so,  in  the  sense  that  a  man 
might  be  a  very  good  psychical  researcher 
but  a  very  bad  man.  But  the  results  of 
psychical  research,  the  deductions  which  we 
may  draw,  and  the  lessons  we  may  learn, 
teach  us  of  the  continued  life  of  the  soul,  of 
the  nature  of  that  life,  and  of  how  it  is  in- 
fluenced by  our  conduct  here.  If  this  is  dis- 
tinct from  religion,  I  must  confess  that  I  do 
not  understand  the  distinction.  To  me  it  is 
religion — the  very  essence  of  it.  But  that 
does  not  mean  that  it  will  necessarily  crystal- 
lise into  a  new  religion.  Personally  I  trust 


52  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

that  it  will  not  do  so.  Surely  we  are  dis- 
united enough  already  ?  Rather  would  I  see 
it  the  great  unifying  force,  the  one  provable 
thing  connected  with  every  religion,  Chris- 
tian or  non-Christian,  forming  the  common 
solid  basis  upon  which  each  raises,  if  it  must 
needs  raise,  that  separate  system  which  ap- 
peals to  the  varied  types  of  mind.  The 
Southern  races  will  always  demand  what  is 
less  austere  than  the  North,  the  West  will 
always  be  more  critical  than  the  East.  One 
cannot  shape  all  to  a  level  conformity.  But 
if  the  broad  premises  which  are  guaranteed 
by  this  teaching  from  beyond  are  accepted, 
then  the  human  race  has  made  a  great  stride 
towards  religious  peace  and  unity.  The 
question  which  faces  us,  then,  is  how  will  this 
influence  bear  upon  the  older  organised  re- 
ligions and  philosophies  which  have  influ- 
enced the  actions  of  men. 

The  answer  is,  that  to  only  one  of  these  re- 
ligions or  philosophies  is  this  new  revelation 
absolutely  fatal.  That  is  to  Materialism.  I 
do  not  say  this  in  any  spirit  of  hostility  to 
Materialists,  who,  so  far  as  they  are  an  or- 
ganized body,  are,  I  think,  as  earnest  and 


THE  REVELATION  53 

moral  as  any  other  class.  But  the  fact  is 
manifest  that  if  spirit  can  live  without  mat- 
ter, then  the  foundation  of  Materialism  is 
gone,  and  the  whole  scheme  of  thought 
crashes  to  the  ground. 

As  to  other  creeds,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
an  acceptance  of  the  teaching  brought  to  us 
from  beyond  would  deeply  modify  conven- 
tional Christianity.  But  these  modifica- 
tions would  be  rather  in  the  direction  of  ex- 
planation and  development  than  of  contra- 
diction. It  would  set  right  grave  misunder- 
standings which  have  always  offended  the 
reason  of  every  thoughtful  man,  but  it  would 
also  confirm  and  make  absolutely  certain  the 
fact  of  life  after  death,  the  base  of  all  re- 
ligion. It  would  confirm  the  unhappy  re- 
sults of  sin,  though  it  would  show  that  those 
results  are  never  absolutely  permanent.  It 
would  confirm  the  existence  of  higher  beings, 
whom  we  have  called  angels,  and  of  an  ever- 
ascending  hierarchy  above  us,  in  which  the 
Christ  spirit  finds  its  place,  culminating  in 
heights  of  the  infinite  with  which  we  asso- 
ciate the  idea  of  all-power  or  of  God.  It 
would  confirm  the  idea  of  heaven  and  of  a 


54  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

temporary  penal  state  which  corresponds  to 
purgatory  rather  than  to  hell.  Thus  this 
new  revelation,  on  some  of  the  most  vital 
points,  is  not  destructive  of  the  beliefs,  and 
it  should  be  hailed  by  really  earnest  men  of 
all  creeds  as  a  most  powerful  ally  rather  than 
a  dangerous  devil-begotten  enemy. 

On  the  other  hand,  let  us  turn  to  the  points 
in  which  Christianity  must  be  modified  by 
this  new  revelation. 

First  of  all  I  would  say  this,  which  must 
be  obvious  to  many,  however  much  they  de- 
plore it :  Christianity  must  change  or  must 
perish.  That  is  the  law  of  life — that  things 
must  adapt  themselves  or  perish.  Chris- 
tianity has  deferred  the  change  very  long, 
she  has  deferred  it  until  her  churches  are 
half  empty,  until  women  are  her  chief  sup- 
porters, and  until  both  the  learned  part  of 
the  community  on  one  side,  and  the  poorest 
class  on  the  other,  both  in  town  and  country, 
are  largely  alienated  from  her.  Let  us  try 
and  trace  the  reason  for  this.  It  is  appar- 
ent in  all  sects,  and  comes,  therefore,  from 
some  deep  common  cause. 


THE  REVELATION  55 

People  are  alienated  because  they  frankly 
do  not  believe  the  facts  as  presented  to 
them  to  be  true.  Their  reason  and  their 
sense  of  justice  are  equally  offended.  One 
can  see  no  justice  in  a  vicarious  sacrifice,  nor 
in  the  God  who  could  be  placated  by  such 
means.  Above  all,  many  cannot  understand 
such  expressions  as  the  "redemption  from 
sin,"  "cleansed  by  the  blood  of  the  Lamb," 
and  so  forth.  So  long  as  there  was  any  ques- 
tion of  the  fall  of  man  there  was  at  least  some 
sort  of  explanation  of  such  phrases;  but 
when  it  became  certain  that  man  had  never 
fallen — when  with  ever  fuller  knowledge  we 
could  trace  our  ancestral  course  down 
through  the  cave-man  and  the  drift-man, 
back  to  that  shadowy  and  far-off  time  when 
the  man-like  ape  slowly  evolved  into  the  ape- 
like man — looking  back  on  all  this  vast  suc- 
cession of  life,  we  knew  that  it  had  always 
been  rising  from  step  to  step.  Never  was 
there  any  evidence  of  a  fall.  But  if  there 
were  no  fall,  then  what  became  of  the  atone- 
ment, of  the  redemption,  of  original  sin,  of 
a  large  part  of  Christian  mystical  philoso- 


66  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

phy  ?  Even  if  it  were  as  reasonable  in  itself 
as  it  is  actually  unreasonable,  it  would  still 
be  quite  divorced  from  the  facts. 

Again,  too  much  seemed  to  be  made  of 
Christ's  death.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing  to 
die  for  an  idea.  Every  religion  has  equally 
had  its  martyrs.  Men  die  continually  for 
their  convictions.  Thousands  of  our  lads 
are  doing  it  at  this  instant  in  France. 
Therefore  the  death  of  Christ,  beautiful  as 
it  is  in  the  Gospel  narrative,  has  seemed  to 
assume  an  undue  importance,  as  though  it 
were  an  isolated  phenomenon  for  a  man  to 
die  in  pursuit  of  a  reform.  In  my  opinion, 
far  too  much  stress  has  been  laid  upon 
Christ's  death,  and  far  too  little  upon  His 
life.  That  was  where  the  true  grandeur  and 
the  true  lesson  lay.  It  was  a  life  which  even 
in  those  limited  records  shows  us  no  trait 
which  is  not  beautiful — a  life'  full  of  easy 
tolerance  for  others,  of  kindly  charity,  of 
broad-minded  moderation,  of  gentle  courage, 
always  progressive  and  open  to  new  ideas, 
and  yet  never  bitter  to  those  ideas  which  He 
was  really  supplanting,  though  He  did  oc- 
casionally lose  His  temper  with  their  more 


THE  REVELATION  57 

bigoted  and  narrow  supporters.  Especially 
one  loves  His  readiness  to  get  at  the  spirit 
of  religion,  sweeping  aside  the  texts  and  the 
forms.  Never  had  anyone  such  a  robust 
common  sense,  or  such  a  sympathy  for  weak- 
ness. It  was  this  most  wonderful  and  un- 
common life,  and  not  his  death,  which  is  the 
true  centre  of  the  Christian  religion. 

Now,  let  us  look  at  the  light  which  we  get 
from  the  spirit  guides  upon  this  question  of 
Christianity.  Opinion  is  not  absolutely  uni- 
form yonder,  any  more  than  it  is  here ;  but 
reading  a  number  of  messages  upon  this  sub- 
ject, they  amount  to  this:  There  are  many 
higher  spirits  with  our  departed.  They 
vary  in  degree.  Call  them  " angels,"  and 
you  are  in  touch  with  old  religious  thought. 
High  above  all  these  is  the  greatest  spirit  of 
whom  they  have  cognizance — not  God,  since 
God  is  so  infinite  that  He  is  not  within  their 
ken— but  one  who  is  nearer  God  and  to  that 
extent  represents  God.  This  is  the  Christ 
Spirit.  His  special  care  is  the  earth.  He 
came  down  upon  it  at  a  time  of  great  earthly 
depravity — a  time  when  the  world  was  al- 
most as  wicked  as  it  is  now,  in  order  to  give 


58  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

the  people  the  lesson  of  an  ideal  life.  Then 
he  returned  to  his  own  high  station,  having 
left  an  example  which  is  still  occasionally 
followed.  That  is  the  story  of  Christ  as 
spirits  have  described  it.  There  is  nothing 
here  of  Atonement  or  Redemption.  But 
there  is  a  perfectly  feasible  and  reasonable 
scheme,  which  I,  for  one,  could  readily  be- 
lieve. 

If  such  a  view  of  Christianity  were  gen- 
erally accepted,  and  if  it  were  enforced  by 
assurance  and  demonstration  from  the  New 
Revelation  which  is  coming  to  us  from  the 
other  side,  then  we  should  have  a  creed  which 
might  unite  the  churches,  which  might  be 
reconciled  to  science,  which  might  defy  all 
attacks,  and  which  might  carry  the  Christian 
Faith  on  for  an  indefinite  period.  Reason 
and  Faith  would  at  last  be  reconciled,  a 
nightmare  would  be  lifted  from  our  minds, 
and  spiritual  peace  would  prevail.  I  do  not 
see  such  results  coming  as  a  sudden  conquest 
or  a  violent  revolution.  Rather  will  it  come 
as  a  peaceful  penetration,  as  some  crude 
ideas,  such  as  the  Eternal  Hell  idea,  have 
already  gently  faded  away  within  our  own 


THE  REVELATION  69 

lifetime.  It  is,  however,  when  the  human 
soul  is  ploughed  and  harrowed  by  suffering 
that  the  seeds  of  truth  may  be  planted,  and 
so  some  future  spiritual  harvest  will  surely 
rise  from  the  days  in  which  we  live. 

When  I  read  the  New  Testament  with  the 
knowledge  which  I  have  of  Spiritualism,  I 
am  left  with  a  deep  conviction  that  the 
teaching  of  Christ  was  in  many  most  im- 
portant respects  lost  by  the  early  Church, 
and  has  not  come  down  to  us.  All  these  al- 
lusions to  a  conquest  over  death  have,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  little  meaning  in  the  present 
Christian  philosophy,  whereas  for  those  who 
have  seen,  however  dimly,  through  the  veil, 
and  touched,  however  slightly,  the  out- 
stretched hands  beyond,  death  has  indeed 
been  conquered.  When  we  read  so  many 
references  to  the  phenomena  with  which  we 
are  familiar,  the  levitations,  the  tongues  of 
fire,  the  rushing  wind,  the  spiritual  gifts,  the 
working  of  wonders,  we  feel  that  the  central 
fact  of  all,  the  continuity  of  life  and  the  com- 
munication with  the  dead,  was  most  certainly 
known.  Our  attention  is  arrested  by  such  a 
saying  as:  "Here  he  worked  no  wonders 


60  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

because  the  people  were  wanting  in  faith." 
Is  this  not  absolutely  in  accordance  with 
psychic  law  as  we  know  it  ?  Or  when  Christ, 
on  being  touched  by  the  sick  woman,  said: 
"Who  has  touched  me?  Much  virtue  has 
passed  out  of  me."  Could  He  say  more 
clearly  what  a  healing  medium  would 
say  now,  save  that  He  would  use  the  word 
"power"  instead  of  "virtue";  or  when  we 
read:  "Try  the  spirits  whether  they  be  of 
God,"  is  it  not  the  very  advice  which  would 
now  be  given  to  a  novice  approaching  a 
seance?  It  is  too  large  a  question  for  me  to 
do  more  than  indicate,  but  I  believe  that  this 
subject,  which  the  more  rigid  Christian 
churches  now  attack  so  bitterly,  is  really  the 
central  teaching  of  Christianity  itself.  To 
those  who  would  read  more  upon  this  line  of 
thought,  I  strongly  recommend  Dr.  Abraham 
Wallace's  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  if  this  valuable 
little  work  is  not  out  of  print.  He  demon- 
strates in  it  most  convincingly  that  Christ's 
miracles  were  all  within  the  powers  of 
psychic  law  as  we  now  understand  it,  and 
were  on  the  exact  lines  of  such  law  even  in 
small  details.  Two  examples  have  already 


THE  REVELATION  61 

been  given.  Many  are  worked  out  in  that 
pamphlet.  One  which  convinced  me  as  a 
truth  was  the  thesis  that  the  story  of  the  ma- 
terialization of  the  two  prophets  upon  the 
mountain  was  extraordinarily  accurate 
when  judged  by  psychic  law.  There  is  the 
fact  that  Peter,  James  and  John  (who 
formed  the  psychic  circle  when  the  dead  was 
restored  to  life,  and  were  presumably  the 
most  helpful  of  the  group)  were  taken. 
Then  there  is  the  choice  of  the  high  pure  air 
of  the  mountain,  the  drowsiness  of  the  at- 
tendant mediums,  the  transfiguring,  the  shin- 
ing robes,  the  cloud,  the  words:  "Let  us 
make  three  tabernacles,"  with  its  alternate 
reading :  "Let  us  make  three  booths  or  cab- 
inets" (the  ideal  way  of  condensing  power 
and  producing  materializations) — all  these 
make  a  very  consistent  theory  of  the  nature 
of  the  proceedings.  For  the  rest,  the  list  of 
gifts  which  St.  Paul  gives  as  being  necessary 
for  the  Christian  Disciple,  is  simply  the  list 
of  gifts  of  a  very  powerful  medium,  includ- 
ing prophecy,  healing,  causing  miracles  (or 
physical  phenomena),  clairvoyance,  and 
other  powers  (I  Corinth,  xii,  8,  11).  The 


63  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

early  Christian  Church  was  saturated  with 
spiritualism,  and  they  seem  to  have  paid  no 
attention  to  those  Old  Testament  prohibi- 
tions which  were  meant  to  keep  these  powers 
only  for  the  use  and  profit  of  the  priesthood,, 


CHAPTER  IK 

THE  COMING  LIFE 

Now,  leaving  this  large  and  possibly  con- 
tentious subject  of  the  modifications  which 
such  new  revelations  must  produce  in  Chris- 
tianity, let  us  try  to  follow  what  occurs  to 
man  after  death.  The  evidence  on  this  point 
is  fairly  full  and  consistent.  Messages 
from  the  dead  have  been  received  in  many 
lands  at  various  times,  mixed  up  with  a  good 
deal  about  this  world,  which  we  could  verify. 
When  messages  come  thus,  it  is  only  fair,  I 
think,  to  suppose  that  if  what  we  can  test  is 
true,  then  what  we  cannot  test  is  true  also. 
When  in  addition  we  find  a  very  great  uni- 
formity in  the  messages  and  an  agreement 
as  to  details  which  are  not  at  all  in  accord- 
ance with  any  pre-existing  scheme  of 
thought,  then  I  think  the  presumption  of 
truth  is  very  strong.  It  is  difficult  to  think 
that  some  fifteen  or  twenty  messages  from 

63 


64  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

various  sources  of  which  I  have  personal 
notes,  all  agree,  and  yet  are  all  wrong,  nor  is 
it  easy  to  suppose  that  spirits  can  tell  the 
truth  about  our  world  but  untruth  about 
their  own. 

I  received  lately,  in  the  same  week,  two 
accounts  of  life  in  the  next  world,  one  re- 
ceived through  the  hand  of  the  near  relative 
of  a  high  dignitary  of  the  Church,  while  the 
other  came  through  the  wife  of  a  working 
mechanician  in  Scotland.  Neither  could 
have  been  aware  of  the  existence  of  the  other, 
and  yet  the  two  accounts  are  so  alike  as  to  be 
practically  the  same.1 

The  message  upon  these  points  seems  to 
me  to  be  infinitely  reassuring,  whether  we 
regard  our  own  fate  or  that  of  our  friends. 
The  departed  all  agree  that  passing  is  usu- 
ally both  easy  and  painless,  and  followed  by 
an  enormous  reaction  of  peace  and  ease. 
The  individual  finds  himself  in  a  spirit  body, 
which  is  the  exact  counterpart  of  his  old  one, 
save  that  all  disease,  weakness,  or  deformity 
has  passed  from  it.  This  body  is  standing 
or  floating  beside  the  old  body,  and  conscious 

i  Vide  Appendix  II. 


THE  COMING  LIFE  65 

both  of  it  and  of  the  surrounding  people. 
At  this  moment  the  dead  man  is  nearer  to 
matter  than  he  will  ever  be  again,  and  hence 
it  is  that  at  that  moment  the  greater  part  of 
those  cases  occur  where,  his  thoughts  having 
turned  to  someone  in  the  distance,  the  spirit 
body  went  with  the  thoughts  and  was  mani- 
fest to  the  person.  Out  of  some  250  cases 
carefully  examined  by  Mr.  Gurney,  134  of 
such  apparitions  were  actually  at  this  mo- 
ment of  dissolution,  when  one  could  imagine 
that  the  new  spirit  body  was  possibly  so  far 
material  as  to  be  more  visible  to  a  sympa- 
thetic human  eye  than  it  would  later  become. 
These  cases,  however,  are  very  rare  in 
comparison  with  the  total  number  of  deaths. 
In  most  cases  I  imagine  that  the  dead  man 
is  too  preoccupied  with  his  own  amazing  ex- 
perience to  have  much  thought  for  others. 
He  soon  finds,  to  his  surprise,  that  though 
he  endeavours  to  communicate  with  those 
whom  he  sees,  his  ethereal  voice  and  his 
ethereal  touch  are  equally  unable  to  make 
any  impression  upon  those  human  organs 
which  are  only  attuned  to  coarser  stimuli. 
It  is  a  fair  subject  for  speculation, 


66  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

whether  a  fuller  knowledge  of  those  light 
rays  which  we  know  to  exist  on  either  side 
of  the  spectrum,  or  of  those  sounds  which 
we  can  prove  by  the  vibrations  of  a  dia- 
phragm to  exist,  although  they  are  too  high 
for  mortal  ear,  may  not  bring  us  some 
further  psychical  knowledge.  Setting  that 
aside,  however,  let  us  follow  the  fortunes 
of  the  departing  spirit.  He  is  presently 
aware  that  there  are  others  in  the  room 
besides  those  who  were  there  in  life,  and 
among  these  others,  who  seem  to  him  as  sub- 
stantial as  the  living,  there  appear  familiar 
faces,  and  he  finds  his  hand  grasped  or  his 
lips  kissed  by  those  whom  he  had  loved  and 
lost.  Then  in  their  company,  and  with  the 
help  and  guidance  of  some  more  radiant  be- 
ing who  has  stood  by  and  waited  for  the  new- 
comer, he  drifts  to  his  own  surprise  through 
all  solid  obstacles  and  out  upon  his  new  life. 
This  is  a  definite  statement,  and  this  is 
the  story  told  by  one  after  the  other  with  a 
consistency  which  impels  belief.  It  is  al- 
ready very  different  from  any  old  theology. 
The  Spirit  is  not  a  glorified  angel  or  goblin 
damned,  but  it  is  simply  the  person  himself, 


THE  COMING  LIFE  67 

containing  all  his  strength  and  weakness,  his 
wisdom  and  his  folly,  exactly  as  he  has  re- 
tained his  personal  appearance.  We  can 
well  believe  that  the  most  frivolous  and  fool- 
ish would  be  awed  into  decency  by  so  tre- 
mendous an  experience,  but  impressions  soon 
become  blunted,  the  old  nature  may  soon  re- 
assert itself  in  new  surroundings,  and  the 
frivolous  still  survive,  as  our  seance  rooms 
can  testify. 

And  now,  before  entering  upon  his  new 
life,  the  new  Spirit  has  a  period  of  sleep 
which  varies  in  its  length,  sometimes  hardly 
existing  at  all,  at  others  extending  for  weeks 
or  months.  Raymond  said  that  his  lasted 
for  six  days.  That  was  the  period  also  in  a 
case  of  which  I  had  some  personal  evidence. 
Mr.  Myers,  on  the  other  hand,  said  that  he 
had  a  very  prolonged  period  of  unconscious- 
ness. I  could  imagine  that  the  length  is  reg- 
ulated by  the  amount  of  trouble  or  mental 
preoccupation  of  this  life,  the  longer  rest  giv- 
ing the  better  means  of  wiping  this  out. 
Probably  the  little  child  would  need  no  such 
interval  at  all.  This,  of  course,  is  pure  spec- 
ulation, but  there  is  a  considerable  consensus 


68  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

of  opinion  as  to  the  existence  of  a  period  of 
oblivion  after  the  first  impression  of  the  new 
life  and  before  entering  upon  its  duties. 

Having  wakened  from  this  sleep,  the  spirit 
is  weak,  as  the  child  is  weak  after  earth 
birth.  Soon,  however,  strength  returns  and 
the  new  life  begins.  This  leads  us  to  the 
consideration  of  heaven  and  hell.  Hell,  I 
may  say,  drops  out  altogether,  as  it  has  long 
dropped  out  of  the  thoughts  of  every  reason- 
able man.  This  odious  conception,  so  blas- 
phemous in  its  view  of  the  Creator,  arose 
from  the  exaggerations  of  Oriental  phrases, 
and  may  perhaps  have  been  of  service  in  a 
coarse  age  where  men  were  frightened  by 
fires,  as  wild  beasts  are  scared  by  the  travel- 
lers. Hell  as  a  permanent  place  does  not 
exist.  But  the  idea  of  punishment,  of  puri- 
fying chastisement,  in  fact  of  Purgatory,  is 
justified  by  the  reports  from  the  other  side. 
Without  such  punishment  there  could  be  no 
justice  in  the  Universe,  for  how  impossible  it 
would  be  to  imagine  that  the  fate  of  a  Eas- 
putin  is  the  same  as  that  of  a  Father  Damien. 
The  punishment  is  very  certain  and  very 
serious,  though  in  its  less  severe  forms  it 


THE  COMING  LIFE  69 

only  consists  in  the  fact  that  the  grosser 
souls  are  in  lower  spheres  with  a  knowledge 
that  their  own  deeds  have  placed  them  there, 
but  also  with  the  hope  that  expiation  and  the 
help  of  those  above  them  will  educate  them 
and  bring  them  level  with  the  others.  In 
this  saving  process  the  higher  spirits  find 
part  of  their  employment.  Miss  Julia  Ames 
in  her  beautiful  posthumous  book,  says  in 
memorable  words:  "The  greatest  joy  of 
Heaven  is  emptying  Hell." 

Setting  aside  those  probationary  spheres, 
which  should  perhaps  rather  be  looked  upon 
as  a  hospital  for  weakly  souls  than  as  a  penal 
community,  the  reports  from  the  other  world 
are  all  agreed  as  to  the  pleasant  conditions 
of  life  in  the  beyond.  They  agree  that  like 
goes  to  like,  that  all  who  love  or  who  have 
interests  in  common  are  united,  that  life  is 
full  of  interest  and  of  occupation,  and  that 
they  would  by  no  means  desire  to  return. 
All  of  this  is  surely  tidings  of  great  joy,  and 
I  repeat  that  it  is  not  a  vague  faith  or  hope, 
but  that  it  is  supported  by  all  the  laws  of 
evidence  which  agree  that  where  many  inde- 
pendent witnesses  give  a  similar  account, 


70  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

that  account  has  a  claim  to  be  considered  a 
true  one.  If  it  were  an  account  of  glorified 
souls  purged  instantly  f  row  all  human  weak- 
ness and  of  a  constant  ecstasy  of  adoration 
round  the  throne  of  the  all  powerful,  it  might 
well  be  suspected  as  being  the  mere  reflec- 
tion of  that  popular  theology  which  all  the 
mediums  had  equally  received  in  their  youth. 
It  is,  however,  very  different  to  any  pre- 
existing system.  It  is  also  supported,  as  I 
have  already  pointed  out,  not  merely  by  the 
consistency  of  the  accounts,  but  by  the  fact 
that  the  accounts  are  the  ultimate  product 
of  a  long  series  of  phenomena,  all  of  which 
have  been  attested  as  true  by  those  who  have 
carefully  examined  them. 

In  connection  with  the  general  subject  of 
life  after  death,  people  may  say  we  have  got 
this  knowledge  already  through  faith.  But 
faith,  however  beautiful  in  the  individual, 
has  always  in  collective  bodies  been  a  very 
two-edged  quality.  All  would  be  well  if 
every  faith  were  alike  and  the  intuitions  of 
the  human  race  were  constant.  We  know 
that  it  is  not  so.  Faith  means  to  say  that 
you  entirely  believe  a  thing  which  you  cannot 


THE  COMING  LIFE  71 

prove.  One  man  says :  "My  faith  is  this/' 
Another  says :  "My  faith  is  that/'  Neither 
can  prove  it,  so  they  wrangle  for  ever,  either 
mentally  or  in  the  old  days  physically.  If 
ont  is  stronger  than  the  other,  he  is  inclined 
to  persecute  him  just  to  twist  him  round  to 
the  true  faith.  Because  Philip  the  Second's 
faith  was  strong  and  clear  he,  quite  logically, 
killed  a  hundred  thousand  Lowlanders  in  the 
hope  that  their  fellow  countrymen  would  be 
turned  to  the  all-important  truth.  Now,  if 
it  were  recognised  that  it  is  by  no  means  vir- 
tuous to  claim  what  you  could  not  prove,  we 
should  then  be  driven  to  observe  facts,  to  rea- 
son from  them,  and  perhaps  reach  common 
agreement.  That  is  why  this  psychical 
movement  appears  so  valuable.  Its  feet  are 
on  something  more  solid  than  texts  or  tradi- 
tions or  intuitions.  It  is  religion  from  the 
double  point  of  view  of  both  worlds  up  to 
date,  instead  of  the  ancient  traditions  of  one 
world. 

We  cannot  look  upon  this  coming  world 
as  a  tidy  Dutch  garden  of  a  place  which  is 
so  exact  that  it  can  easily  be  described.  It 
is  probable  that  those  messengers  who  eome 


72  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

back  to  us  are  all,  more  or  less,  in  one  state 
of  development  and  represent  the  same 
wave  of  life  as  it  recedes  from  our  shores. 
Communications  usually  come  from  those 
who  have  not  long  passed  over,  and  tend  to 
grow  fainter,  as  one  would  expect.  It  is 
instructive  in  this  respect  to  notice  that 
Christ's  reappearances  to  his  disciples  or  to 
Paul,  are  said  to  have  been  within  a  very 
few  years  of  his  death,  and  that  there  is  no 
claim  among  the  early  Christians  to  have 
seen  him  later.  The  cases  of  spirits  who 
give  good  proof  of  authenticity  and  yet  have 
passed  some  time  are  not  common.  There 
is,  in  Mr.  Dawson  Roger's  life,  a  very  good 
case  of  a  spirit  who  called  himself  Manton, 
and  claimed  to  have  been  born  at  Lawrence 
Lydiard  and  buried  at  Stoke  Newington  in 
1677.  It  was  clearly  shown  afterwards  that 
there  was  such  a  man,  and  that  he  was 
Oliver  Cromwell's  chaplain.  So  far  as  my 
own  reading  goes,  this  is  the  oldest  spirit 
who  is  on  record  as  returning,  and  generally 
they  are  quite  recent.  Hence,  one  gets  all 
one's  views  from  the  one  generation,  as  it 
were,  and  we  cannot  take  them  as  final,  but 


THE  COMING  LIFE  73 

only  as  partial.  How  spirits  may  see  things 
in  a  different  light  as  they  progress  in  the 
other  world  is  shown  by  Miss  Julia  Ames, 
who  was  deeply  impressed  at  first  by  the 
necessity  of  forming  a  bureau  of  communica- 
tion, but  admitted,  after  fifteen  years,  that 
not  one  spirit  in  a  million  among  the  main 
body  upon  the  further  side  ever  wanted  to 
communicate  with  us  at  all  since  their  own 
loved  ones  had  come  over.  She  had  been 
misled  by  the  fact  that  when  she  first  passed 
over  everyone  she  met  was  newly  arrived  like 
herself. 

Thus  the  account  we  give  may  be  partial, 
but  still  such  as  it  is  it  is  very  consistent  and 
of  extraordinary  interest,  since  it  refers  to 
our  own  destiny  and  that  of  those  we  love. 
All  agree  that  life  beyond  is  for  a  limited 
period,  after  which  they  pass  on  to  yet  other 
phases,  but  apparently  there  is  more  com- 
munication between  these  phases  than  there 
is  between  us  and  Spiritland.  The  lower 
cannot  ascend,  but  the  higher  can  descend  at 
will.  The  life  has  a  close  analogy  to  that  of 
this  world  at  its  best.  It  is  pre-eminently  a 
life  of  the  mind,  as  this  is  of  the  body.  Pre- 


74  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

occupations  of  food,  money,  lust,  pain,  etc., 
are  of  the  body  and  are  gone.  Music,  the 
Arts,  intellectual  and  spiritual  knowledge, 
and  progress  have  increased.  The  people 
are  clothed,  as  one  would  expect,  since  there 
is  no  reason  why  modesty  should  disappear 
with  our  new  forms.  These  new  forms  are 
the  absolute  reproduction  of  the  old  ones  at 
their  best,  the  young  growing  up  and  the  old 
reverting  until  all  come  to  the  normal. 
People  live  in  communities,  as  one  would  ex- 
pect if  like  attracts  like,  and  the  male  spirit 
still  finds  his  true  mate  though  there  is  no 
sexuality  in  the  grosser  sense  and  no  child- 
birth. Since  connections  still  endure,  and 
those  in  the  same  state  of  development  keep 
abreast,  one  would  expect  that  nations  are 
still  roughly  divided  from  each  other,  though 
language  is  no  longer  a  bar,  since  thought 
has  become  a  medium  of  conversation.  How 
close  is  the  connection  between  kindred  souls 
over  there  is  shown  by  the  way  in  which 
Myers,  Gurney  and  Koden  Noel,  all  friends 
and  co-workers  on  earth,  sent  messages  to- 
gether through  Mrs.  Holland,  who  knew 
none  of  them,  each  message  being  character- 


THE  COMING  LIFE  75 

istic  to  those  who  knew  the  men  in  life — or 
the  way  in  which  Professor  Verrall  and  Pro- 
fessor Butcher,  both  famous  Greek  scholars, 
collaborated  to  produce  the  Greek  problem 
which  has  been  analysed  by  Mr.  Gerald  Bal- 
four  in  The  Ear  of  Dionysius,  with  the  re- 
sult that  that  excellent  authority  testified 
that  the  effect  could  have  been  attained  by 
no  other  entities,  save  only  Verrall  and 
Butcher.  It  may  be  remarked  in  passing 
that  these  and  other  examples  show  clearly 
either  that  the  spirits  have  the  use  of  an  ex- 
cellent reference  library  or  else  that  they 
have  memories  which  produce  something  like 
omniscience.  No  human  memory  could  pos- 
sibly carry  all  the  exact  quotations  which 
occur  in  such  communications  as  The  Ear  of 
Dionysius. 

These,  roughly  speaking,  are  the  lines  of 
the  life  beyond  in  its  simplest  expression,  for 
it  is  not  all  simple,  and  we  catch  dim 
glimpses  of  endless  circles  below  descending 
into  gloom  and  endless  circles  above,  ascend- 
ing into  glory,  all  improving,  all  purposeful, 
all  intensely  alive.  All  are  agreed  that  no 
religion  upon  earth  has  any  advantage  over 


76  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

another,  but  that  character  and  refinement 
are  everything.  At  the  same  time,  all  are 
also  in  agreement  that  all  religions  which  in- 
culcate prayer,  and  an  upward  glance  rather 
than  eyes  for  ever  on  the  level,  are  good.-  In 
this  sense,  and  in  no  other — as  a  help  to 
spiritual  life — every  form  may  have  a  pur- 
pose for  somebody.  If  to  twirl  a  brass  cylin- 
der forces  the  Thibetan  to  admit  that  there 
is  something  higher  than  his  mountains,  and 
more  precious  than  his  yaks,  then  to  that  ex- 
tent it  is  good.  We  must  not  be  censorious 
in  such  matters. 

There  is  one  point  which  may  be  men- 
tioned here  which  is  at  first  startling  and 
yet  must  commend  itself  to  our  reason  when 
we  reflect  upon  it.  This  is  the  constant  as- 
sertion from  the  other  side  that  the  newly 
passed  do  not  know  that  they  are  dead,  and 
that  it  is  a  long  time,  sometimes  a  very  long 
time,  before  they  can  be  made  to  understand 
it.  All  of  them  agree  that  this  state  of  be- 
wilderment is  harmful  and  retarding  to  the 
spirit,  and  that  some  knowledge  of  the  actual 
truth  upon  this  side  is  the  only  way  to  make 
sure  of  not  being  dazed  upon  the  other. 


THE  COMING  LIFE  77 

Finding  conditions  entirely  different  from 
anything  for  which  either  scientific  or  re- 
ligious teaching  had  prepared  them,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  they  look  upon  their  new  sensa- 
tions as  some  strange  dream,  and  the  more 
rigidly  orthodox  have  been  their  views,  the 
more  impossible  do  they  find  it  to  accept 
these  new  surroundings  with  all  that  they 
imply.  For  this  reason,  as  well  as  for  many 
others,  this  new  revelation  is  a  very  needful 
thing  for  mankind.  A  smaller  point  of 
practical  importance  is  that  the  aged  should 
realise  that  it  is  still  worth  while  to  improve 
their  minds,  for  though  they  have  no  time 
to  use  their  fresh  knowledge  in  this  world  it 
will  remain  as  part  of  their  mental  outfit  in 
the  next.  **- 

As  to  the  smaller  details  of  this  life  be- 
yond, it  is  better  perhaps  not  to  treat  them, 
for  the  very  good  reason  that  they  are  small 
details.  We  will  learn  them  all  soon  for 
ourselves,  and  it  is  only  vain  curiosity  which 
leads  us  to  ask  for  them  now.  One  thing 
is  clear :  there  are  higher  intelligences  over 
yonder  to  whom  synthetic  chemistry,  which 
not  only  makes  the  substance  but  moulds  the 


78  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

form,  is  a  matter  of  absolute  ease.  We  see 
them  at  work  in  the  coarser  media,  percept- 
ible to  our  material  senses,  in  the  seance 
room.  If  they  can  build  up  simulacra  in  the 
seance  room,  how  much  may  we  expect 
them  to  do  when  they  are  working  upon 
ethereal  objects  in  that  ether  which  is  their 
own  medium.  It  may  be  said  generally  that 
they  can  make  something  which  is  analogous 
to  anything  which  exists  upon  earth.  How 
they  do  it  may  well  be  a  matter  of  guess  and 
speculation  among  the  less  advanced  spirits, 
as  the  phenomena  of  modern  science  are  a 
matter  of  guess  and  speculation  to  us.  If 
one  of  us  were  suddenly  called  up  by  the 
denizen  of  some  sub-human  world,  and  were 
asked  to  explain  exactly  what  gravity  is,  or 
what  magnetism  is,  how  helpless  we  should 
be !  We  may  put  ourselves  in  the  position, 
then,  of  a  young  engineer  soldier  like  Eay- 
mond  Lodge,  who  tries  to  give  some  theory 
of  matter  in  the  beyond — a  theory  which  is 
very  likely  contradicted  by  some  other  spirit 
who  is  also  guessing  at  things  above  him. 
He  may  be  right,  or  he  may  be  wrong,  but 
he  is  doing  his  best  to  say  what  he  thinks,  as 


THE  COMING  LIFE  70 

we  should  do  in  similar  case.  He  believes 
that  his  transcendental  chemists  can  make 
anything,  and  that  even  such  unspiritual 
matter  as  alcohol  or  tobacco  could  come 
within  their  powers  and  could  still  be  craved 
for  by  unregenerate  spirits.  This  has 
tickled  the  critics  to  such  an  extent  that  one 
would  really  think  to  read  the  comments  that 
it  was  the  only  statement  in  a  book  which 
contains  400  closely-printed  pages.  Ray- 
mond may  be  right  or  wrong,  but  the  only 
thing  which  the  incident  proves  to  me  is  the 
unflinching  courage  and  honesty  of  the  man 
who  chronicled  it,  knowing  well  the  handle 
that  he  was  giving  to  his  enemies. 

There  are  many  who  protest  that  this 
world  which  is  described  to  us  is  too  mate- 
rial for  their  liking.  It  is  not  as  they  would 
desire  it.  Well,  there  are  many  things  in 
this  world  which  seem  different  from  what 
we  desire,  but  they  exist  none  the  less.  But 
when  we  come  to  examine  this  charge  of  ma- 
terialism and  try  to  construct  some  sort 
of  system  which  would  satisfy  the  idealists, 
it  becomes  a  very  difficult  task.  Are  we  to 
be  mere  wisps  of  gaseous  happiness  floating 


80  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

about  in  the  air  ?  That  seems  to  be  the  idea. 
But  if  there  is  no  body  like  our  own,  and 
if  there  is  no  character  like  our  own,  then 
say  what  you  will,  we  have  become  extinct. 
What  is  it  to  a  mother  if  some  impersonal 
glorified  entity  is  shown  to  her?  She  will 
say,  "that  is  not  the  son  I  lost — I  want  his 
yellow  hair,  his  quick  smile,  his  little  moods 
that  I  know  so  well."  That  is  what  she 
wants ;  that,  I  believe,  is  what  she  will  have ; 
but  she  will  not  have  them  by  any  system 
which  cuts  us  away  from  all  that  reminds  us 
of  matter  and  takes  us  to  a  vague  region  of 
floating  emotions. 

There  is  an  opposite  school  of  critics 
which  rather  finds  the  difficulty  in  pictur- 
ing a  life  which  has  keen  perceptions,  robust 
emotions,  and  a  solid  surrounding  all  con- 
structed in  so  diaphanous  a  material.  Let 
us  remember  that  everything  depends  upon 
its  comparison  with  the  things  around  it. 

If  we  could  conceive  of  a  world  a  thousand 
times  denser,  heavier  and  duller  than  this 
world,  we  can  clearly  see  that  to  its  inmates 
it  would  seem  much  the  same  as  this,  since 
their  strength  and  texture  would  be  in  pro- 


THE  COMING  LIFE  81 

portion.  If,  however,  these  inmates  came 
in  contact  with  us,  they  would  look  upon  us 
as  extraordinarily  airy  beings  living  in  a 
strange,  light,  spiritual  atmosphere.  They 
would  not  remember  that  we  also,  since  our 
beings  and  our  surroundings  are  in  harmony 
and  in  proportion  to  each  other,  feel  and  act 
exactly  as  they  do. 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  case  of  yet 
another  stratum  of  life,  which  is  as  much 
above  us  as  the  leaden  community  would  be 
below  us.  To  us  also  it  seems  as  if  these 
people,  these  spirits,  as  we  call  them,  live  the 
lives  of  vapour  and  of  shadows.  We  do  not 
recollect  that  there  also  everything  is  in  pro- 
portion and  in  harmony  so  that  the  spirit 
scene  or  the  spirit  dwelling,  which  might 
seem  a  mere  dream  thing  to  us,  is  as  actual 
to  the  spirit  as  are  our  own  scenes  or  our 
own  dwellings,  and  that  the  spirit  body  is  as 
real  and  tangible  to  another  spirit  as  ours  to 
our  friends. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS 

LEAVING  for  a  moment  the  larger  argu- 
ment as  to  the  lines  of  this  revelation  and 
the  broad  proofs  of  its  validity,  there  are 
some  smaller  points  which  have  forced  them- 
selves upon  my  attention  during  the  con- 
sideration of  the  subject.  This  home  of  our 
dead  seems  to  be  very  near  to  us — so  near 
that  we  continually,  as  they  tell  us,  visit 
them  in  our  sleep.  Much  of  that  quiet  resig- 
nation which  we  have  all  observed  in  people 
who  have  lost  those  whom  they  loved — peo- 
ple who  would  in  our  previous  opinion  have 
been  driven  mad  by  such  loss — is  due  to  the 
fact  that  they  have  seen  their  dead,  and  that 
although  the  switch-off  is  complete  and  they 
can  recall  nothing  whatever  of  the  spirit  ex- 
perience in  sleep,  the  soothing  result  of  it  is 
still  carried  on  by  the  subconscious  self. 
The  switch-off  is,  as  I  say,  complete,  but 
sometimes  for  some  reason  it  is  hung  up  for 

82 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        83 

a  fraction  of  a  second,  and  it  is  at  such  mo- 
ments that  the  dreamer  comes  back  from  his 
dream  " trailing  clouds  of  glory."  From 
this  also  come  all  those  prophetic  dreams 
many  of  which  are  well  attested.  I  have 
had  a  recent  personal  experience  of  one 
which  has  not  yet  perhaps  entirely  justified 
itself  but  is  even  now  remarkable.  Upon 
April  4th  of  last  year,  1917, 1  awoke  with  a 
feeling  that  some  communication  had  been 
made  to  me  of  which  I  had  only  carried  back 
one  word  which  was  ringing  in  my  head. 
That  word  was  "Piave."  To  the  best  of 
my  belief  I  had  never  heard  the  word  be- 
fore. As  it  sounded  like  the  name  of  a  place 
I  went  into  my  study  the  moment  I  had 
dressed  and  I  looked  up  the  index  of  my 
Atlas.  There  was  " Piave"  sure  enough, 
and  I  noted  that  it  was  a  river  in  Italy  some 
forty  miles  behind  the  front  line,  which  at 
that  time  was  victoriously  advancing.  I 
could  imagine  few  more  unlikely  things 
than  that  the  war  should  roll  back  to  the 
Piave,  and  I  could  not  think  how  any  mili- 
tary event  of  consequence  could  arise  there, 
but  none  the  less  I  was  so  impressed  that  I 


84  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

drew  up  a  statement  that  some  such  event 
would  occur  there,  and  I  had  it  signed  by  my 
secretary  and  witnessed  by  my  wife  with  the 
date,  April  4th,  attached.  It  is  a  matter  of 
history  how  six  months  later  the  whole 
Italian  line  fell  back,  how  it  abandoned  suc- 
cessive positions  upon  rivers,  and  how  it 
stuck  upon  this  stream  which  was  said  by 
military  critics  to  be  strategically  almost  un- 
tenable. If  nothing  more  should  occur  (I 
write  upon  February  20th,  1918),  the  refer- 
ence to  the  name  has  been  fully  justified, 
presuming  that  some  friend  in  the  beyond 
was  forecasting  the  coming  events  of  the 
war.  I  have  still  a  hope,  however,  that  more 
was  meant,  and  that  some  crowning  victory 
of  the  Allies  at  this  spot  may  justify  still 
further  the  strange  way  in  which  the  name 
was  conveyed  to  my  mind. 

People  may  well  cry  out  against  this 
theory  of  sleep  on  the  grounds  that  all  the 
grotesque,  monstrous  and  objectionable 
dreams  which  plague  us  cannot  possibly 
come  from  a  high  source.  On  this  point  I 
have  a  very  definite  theory,  which  may  per- 
haps be  worthy  of  discussion.  I  consider 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS         85 

that  there  are  two  forms  of  dreams,  and  only 
two,  the  experiences  of  the  released  spirit, 
and  the  confused  action  of  the  lower  facul- 
ties which  remain  in  the  body  when  the 
spirit  is  absent.  The  former  is  rare  and 
beautiful,  for  the  memory  of  it  fails  us.  The 
latter  are  common  and  varied,  but  usually 
fantastic  or  ignoble.  By  noting  what  is  ab- 
sent in  the  lower  dreams  one  can  tell  what 
the  missing  qualities  are,  and  so  judge  what 
part  of  us  goes  to  make  up  the  spirit.  Thus 
in  these  dreams  humour  is  wanting,  since  we 
see  things  which  strike  us  afterwards  as 
ludicrous,  and  are  not  amused.  The  sense 
of  proportion  and  of  judgment  and  of  aspir- 
ation is  all  gone.  In  short,  the  higher  is 
palpably  gone,  and  the  lower,  the  sense  of 
fear,  of  sensual  impression,  of  self-preser- 
vation, is  functioning  all  the  more  vividly 
because  it  is  relieved  from  the  higher 
control. 

The  limitations  of  the  powers  of  spirits  is 
a  subject  which  is  brought  home  to  one  in 
these  studies.  People  say,  "If  they  exist 
why  don't  they  do  this  or  that1?"  The  an- 
swer usually  is  that  they  can't.  They  ap- 


86  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

pear  to  have  very  fixed  limitations  like 
our  own.  This  seemed  to  be  very  clearly 
brought  out  in  the  cross-correspondence  ex- 
periments where  several  writing  mediums 
were  operating  at  a  distance  quite  inde- 
pendently of  each  other,  and  the  object  was 
to  get  agreement  which  was  beyond  the  reach 
of  coincidence.  The  spirits  seem  to  know 
exactly  what  they  impress  upon  the  minds 
of  the  living,  but  they  do  not  know  how  far 
they  carry  their  instruction  out.  Their 
touch  with  us  is  intermittent.  Thus,  in  the 
cross-correspondence  experiments  we  con- 
tinually have  them  asking,  "Did  you  get 
that?"  or  "Was  it  all  right?"  Sometimes 
they  have  partial  cognisance  of  what  is  done, 
as  where  Myers  says:  "I  saw  the  circle, 
but  was  not  sure  about  the  triangle."  It  is 
everywhere  apparent  that  their  spirits,  even 
the  spirits  of  those  who,  like  Myers  and 
Hodgson,  were  in  specially  close  touch  with 
psychic  subjects,  and  knew  all  that  could 
be  done,  were  in  difficulties  when  they  de- 
sired to  get  cognisance  of  a  material  thing, 
such  as  a  written  document.  Only,  I  should 
imagine,  by  partly  materialising  themselves 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        87 

could  they  do  so,  and  they  may  not  have  had 
the  power  of  self-materialization.  This  con- 
sideration throws  some  light  upon  the  fa- 
mous case,  so  often  used  by  our  opponents, 
where  Myers  failed  to  give  some  word  or 
phrase  which  had  been  left  behind  in  a 
sealed  box.  Apparently  he  could  not  see 
this  document  from  his  present  position,  and 
if  his  memory  failed  him  he  would  be  very 
likely  to  go  wrong  about  it. 

Many  mistakes  may,  I  think,  be  explained 
in  this  fashion.  It  has  been  asserted  from 
the  other  side,  and  the  assertion  seems  to  me 
reasonable,  that  when  they  speak  of  their 
own  conditions  they  are  speaking  of  what 
they  know  and  can  readily  and  surely  dis- 
cuss; but  that  when  we  insist  (as  we  must 
sometimes  insist)  upon  earthly  tests,  it  drags 
them  back  to  another  plane  of  things,  and 
puts  them  in  a  position  which  is  far  more 
difficult,  and  liable  to  error. 

Another  point  which  is  capable  of  being 
used  against  us  is  this:  The  spirits  have 
the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting  names 
through  to  us,  and  it  is  this  which  makes 
many  of  their  communications  so  vague  and 


88  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

unsatisfactory.  They  will  talk  all  round  a 
thing,  and  yet  never  get  the  name  which 
would  clinch  the  matter.  There  is  an  ex- 
ample of  the  point  in  a  recent  communi- 
cation in  Light,  which  describes  how  a 
young  officer,  recently  dead,  endeavoured  to 
get  a  message  through  the  direct  voice 
method  of  Mrs.  Susannah  Harris  to  his  fa- 
ther. He  could  not  get  his  name  through. 
He  was  able,  however,  to  make  it  clear  that 
his  father  was  a  member  of  the  Kildare 
Street  Club  in  Dublin.  Inquiry  found  the 
father,  and  it  was  then  learned  that  the  fa- 
ther had  already  received  an  independent 
message  in  Dublin  to  say  that  an  inquiry  was 
coming  through  from  London.  I  do  not 
know  if  the  earth  name  is  a  merely  ephem- 
eral thing,  quite  disconnected  from  the  per- 
sonality, and  perhaps  the  very  first  thing  to 
be  thrown  aside.  That  is,  of  course,  possi- 
ble. Or  it  may  be  that  some  law  regulates 
our  intercourse  from  the  other  side  by  which 
it  shall  not  be  too  direct,  and  shall  leave 
something  to  our  own  intelligence. 

This  idea,  that  there  is  some  law  which 
makes  an  indirect  speech  more  easy  than  a 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        89 

direct  one,  is  greatly  borne  out  by  the  cross- 
correspondences,  where  circumlocution  con- 
tinually takes  the  place  of  assertion.  Thus, 
in  the  St.  Paul  correspondence,  which  is 
treated  in  the  July  pamphlet  of  the  S.P.R., 
the  idea  of  St.  Paul  was  to  be  conveyed  from 
one  automatic  writer  to  two  others,  both  of 
whom  were  at  a  distance,  one  of  them  in 
India.  Dr.  Hodgson  was  the  spirit  who 
professed  to  preside  over  this  experiment. 
You  would  think  that  the  simple  words  "St. 
Paul"  occurring  in  the  other  scripts  would 
be  all-sufficient.  But  no;  he  proceeds  to 
make  all  sorts  of  indirect  allusions,  to  talk 
all  round  St.  Paul  in  each  of  the  scripts,  and 
to  make  five  quotations  from  St.  Paul's  writ- 
ings. This  is  beyond  coincidence,  and  quite 
convincing,  but  none  the  less  it  illustrates 
the  curious  way  in  which  they  go  round  in- 
stead of  going  straight.  If  one  could  imag- 
ine some  wise  angel  on  the  other  side  saying, 
"Now,  don't  make  it  too  easy  for  these  peo- 
ple. Make  them  use  their  own  brains  a  lit- 
tle. They  will  become  mere  automatons  if 
we  do  everything  for  them" — if  we  could 
imagine  that,  it  would  just  cover  the  case. 


90  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

Whatever  the  explanation,  it  is  a  noteworthy 
fact 

There  is  another  point  about  spirit  com- 
munications which  is  worth  noting.  This  is 
their  uncertainty  wherever  any  time  element 
comes  in.  Their  estimate  of  time  is  almost 
invariably  wrong.  Earth  time  is  probably 
a  different  idea  to  spirit  time,  and  hence  the 
confusion.  We  had  the  advantage,  as  I 
have  stated,  of  the  presence  of  a  lady  in  our 
household  who  developed  writing  medium- 
ship.  She  was  in  close  touch  with  three 
brothers,  all  of  whom  had  been  killed  in  the 
war.  This  lady,  conveying  messages  from 
her  brothers,  was  hardly  ever  entirely  wrong 
upon  facts,  and  hardly  ever  right  about  time. 
There  was  one  notable  exception,  however, 
which  in  itself  is  suggestive.  Although  her 
prophecies  as  to  public  events  were  weeks 
or  even  months  out,  she  in  one  case  foretold 
the  arrival  of  a  telegram  from  Africa  to  the 
day.  Now  the  telegram  had  already  been 
sent,  but  was  delayed,  so  that  the  inference 
seems  to  be  that  she  could  foretell  a  course 
of  events  which  had  actually  been  set  in  mo- 
tion, and  calculate  how  long  they  would  take 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        91 

to  reach  their  end.  On  the  other  hand,  I  am 
bound  to  admit  that  she  confidently  prophe- 
sied the  escape  of  her  fourth  brother,  who 
was  a  prisoner  in  Germany,  and  that  this 
was  duly  fulfilled.  On  the  whole  I  preserve 
an  open  mind  upon  the  powers  and  limita- 
tions of  prophecy. 

But  apart  from  all  these  limitations  we 
have,  unhappily,  to  deal  with  absolute  cold- 
blooded lying  on  the  part  of  wicked  or  mis- 
chievous intelligences.  Everyone  who  has 
investigated  the  matter  has,  I  suppose,  met 
with  examples  of  wilful  deception,  which  oc- 
casionally are  mixed  up  with  good  and  true 
communications.  It  was  of  such  messages, 
no  doubt,  that  the  Apostle  wrote  when  he 
said:  " Beloved,  believe  not  every  spirit, 
but  try  the  spirits  whether  they  are  of  Gk>d." 
These  words  can  only  mean  that  the  early 
Christians  not  only  practised  Spiritualism 
as  we  understand  it,  but  also  that  they  were 
faced  by  the  same  difficulties.  There  is 
nothing  more  puzzling  than  the  fact  that  one 
may  get  a  long  connected  description  with 
every  detail  given,  and  that  it  may  prove  to 
be  entirely  a  concoction.  However,  we  must 


92  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

bear  in  mind  that  if  one  case  comes  abso- 
lutely correct,  it  atones  for  many  failures, 
just  as  if  you  had  one  telegram  correct  you 
would  know  that  there  was  a  line  and  a  com- 
municator, however  much  they  broke  down 
afterwards.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that 
it  is  very  discomposing  and  makes  one  scep- 
tical of  messages  until  they  are  tested.  Of 
a  kin  with  these  false  influences  are  all  the 
Miltons  who  cannot  scan,  and  Shelleys  who 
cannot  rhyme,  and  Shakespeares  who  can- 
not think,  and  all  the  other  absurd  imper- 
sonations which  make  our  cause  ridiculous. 
They  are,  I  think,  deliberate  frauds,  either 
from  this  side  or  from  the  other,  but  to  say 
thai;  they  invalidate  the  whole  subject  is  as 
senseless  as  to  invalidate  our  own  world  be- 
cau.se  we  encounter  some  unpleasant  people. 
O'ne  thing  I  can  truly  say,  and  that  is,  that 
in  sspite  of  false  messages,  I  have  never  in 
all  liiese  years  known  a  blasphemous,  an  un- 
kind, or  an  obscene  message.  Such  inci- 
dents must  be  of  very  exceptional  nature.  I 
think  also  that,  so  far  as  allegations  concern- 
ing insanity,  obsession,  and  so  forth  go,  they 
are  .entirely  imaginary.  Asylum  statistics 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS         93 

do  not  bear  out  such  assertions,  and  me- 
diums li ve  to  as  good  an  average  age  as  any- 
one else.  I  think,  however,  that  the  cult  of 
the  seance  may  be  very  much  overdone. 
When  once  you  have  convinced  yourself  of 
the  truth  of  the  phenomena  the  physical 
seance  has  done  its  work,  and  the  man  or 
woman  who  spends  his  or  her  life  in  run- 
ning from  seance  to  seance  is  in  danger  of 
becoming  a  mere  sensation  hunter.  Here, 
as  in  other  cults,  the  form  is  in  danger  of 
eclipsing  the  real  thing,  and  in  pursuit  of 
physical  proofs  one  may  forget  that  the  real 
object  of  all  these  things  is,  as  I  have  tried 
to  point  out,  to  give  us  assurance  in  the  fu- 
ture and  spiritual  strength  in  the  present, 
to  attain  a  due  perception  of  the  passing 
nature  of  matter  and  the  all-importance  of 
that  which  is  immaterial. 

The  conclusion,  then,  of  my  long  search 
after  truth,  is  that  in  spite  of  occasional 
fraud,  which  Spiritualists  deplore,  and  in 
spite  of  wild  imaginings,  which  they  dis- 
courage, there  remains  a  great  solid  core  in 
this  movement  which  is  infinitely  nearer  to 
positive  proof  than  any  other  religious  de- 


94  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

velopment  with  which  I  am  acquainted.  AM 
I  have  shown,  it  would  appear  to  be  a  re- 
discovery rather  than  an  absolutely  new 
thing,  but  the  result  in  this  material  age  is 
the  same.  The  days  are  surely  passing 
when  the  mature  and  considered  opinions  of 
such  men  as  Crookes,  Wallace,  Flammarion, 
Chas.  Richet,  Lodge,  Barrett,  Lombroso, 
Generals  Drayson  and  Turner,  Sergeant 
Ballantyne,  W.  T.  Stead,  Judge  Edmunds, 
Admiral  Usborne  Moore,  the  late  Archdea- 
con Wilberforce,  and  such  a  cloud  of  other 
witnesses,  can  be  dismissed  with  the  empty 
"  All  rot"  or  "Nauseating  drivel"  formulae. 
As  Mr.  Arthur  Hill  has  well  said,  we  have 
reached  a  point  where  further  proof  is  su- 
perfluous, and  where  the  weight  of  disproof 
lies  upon  those  who  deny.  The  very  people 
who  clamour  for  proofs  have  as  a  rule  never 
taken  the  trouble  to  examine  the  copious 
proofs  which  already  exist.  Each  seems  to 
think  that  the  whole  subject  should  begin 
de  novo  because  he  has  asked  for  informa- 
tion. The  method  of  our  opponents  is  to 
fasten  upon  the  latest  man  who  has  stated 
the  case — at  the  present  instant  it  happens 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        96 

to  be  Sir  Oliver  Lodge — and  then  to  deal 
with  him  as  if  he  had  come  forward  with 
some  new  opinions  which  rested  entirely 
upon  his  own  assertion,  with  no  reference  to 
the  corroboration  of  so  many  independent 
workers  before  him.  This  is  not  an  honest 
method  of  criticism,  for  in  every  case  the 
agreement  of  witnesses  is  the  very  root  of 
conviction.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there 
are  many  single  witnesses  upon  whom  this 
case  could  rest.  If,  for  example,  our  only 
knowledge  of  unknown  forces  depended 
upon  the  researches  of  Dr.  Crawford  of  Bel- 
fast, who  places  his  amateur  medium  in  a 
weighing  chair  with  her  feet  from  the 
ground,  and  has  been  able  to  register  a  dif- 
ference of  weight  of  many  pounds,  corre- 
sponding with  the  physical  phenomena  pro- 
duced, a  result  which  he  has  tested  and  re- 
corded in  a  true  scientific  spirit  of  caution, 
I  do  not  see  how  it  could  be  shaken.  The 
phenomena  are  and  have  long  been  firmly 
established  for  every  open  mind.  One  feels 
that  the  stage  of  investigation  is  passed,  and 
that  of  religious  construction  is  overdue. 
For  are  we  to  satisfy  ourselves  by  observ- 


96  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

ing  phenomena  with  no  attention  to  what 
the  phenomena  mean,  as  a  group  of  savages 
might  stare  at  a  wireless  installation  with 
no  appreciation  of  the  messages  coming 
through  it,  or  are  we  resolutely  to  set  our- 
selves to  define  these  subtle  and  elusive  ut- 
terances from  beyond,  and  to  construct  from 
them  a  religious  scheme,  which  will  be 
founded  upon  human  reason  on  this  side  and 
upon  spirit  inspiration  upon  the  other? 
These  phenomena  have  passed  through  the 
stage  of  being  a  parlour  game ;  they  are  now 
emerging  from  that  of  a  debatable  scientific 
novelty;  and  they  are,  or  should  be,  taking 
shape  as  the  foundations  of  a  definite  system 
of  religious  thought,  in  some  ways  confirma- 
tory of  ancient  systems,  in  some  ways  en- 
tirely new.  The  evidence  upon  which  this 
system  rests  is  so  enormous  that  it  would 
take  a  very  considerable  library  to  contain 
it,  and  the  witnesses  are  not  shadowy  people 
living  in  the  dim  past  and  inaccessible  to  our 
cross-examination,  but  are  our  own  contem- 
poraries, men  of  character  and  intellect 
whom  all  must  respect.  The  situation  may, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  be  summed  up  in  a  simpk 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        97 

alternative.  The  one  supposition  is  that 
there  has  been  an  outbreak  of  lunacy  extend- 
ing over  two  generations  of  mankind,  and 
two  great  continents — a  lunacy  which  assails 
men  or  women  who  are  otherwise  eminently 
sane.  The  alternative  supposition  is  that 
in  recent  years  there  has  come  to  us  from 
divine  sources  a  new  revelation  which  con- 
stitutes by  far  the  greatest  religious  event 
since  the  death  of  Christ  (for  the  Eeforma- 
tion  was  a  re-arrangement  of  the  old,  not  a 
revelation  of  the  new),  a  revelation  which 
alters  the  whole  aspect  of  death  and  the  fate 
of  man.  Between  these  two  suppositions 
there  is  no  solid  position.  Theories  of  fraud 
or  of  delusion  will  not  meet  the  evidence. 
It  is  absolute  lunacy  or  it  is  a  revolution  in 
religious  thought,  a  revolution  which  gives 
us  as  by-products  an  utter  fearlessness  of 
death,  and  an  immense  consolation  when 
those  who  are  dear  to  us  pass  behind  the  veil. 
I  should  like  to  add  a  few  practical  words 
to  those  who  know  the  truth  of  what  I  say. 
We  have  here  an  enormous  new  develop- 
ment, the  greatest  in  the  history  of  mankind. 
How  are  we  to  use  it?  We  are  bound  in 


98  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

honour,  I  think,  to  state  our  own  belief,  espe- 
cially to  those  who  are  in  trouble.  Having 
stated  it,  we  should  not  force  it,  but  leave  the 
rest  to  higher  wisdom  than  our  own.  We 
wish  to  subvert  no  religion.  We  wish  only 
to  bring  back  the  material-minded — to  take 
them  out  of  their  cramped  valley  and  put 
them  on  the  ridge,  whence  they  can  breathe 
purer  air  and  see  other  valleys  and  other 
ridges  beyond.  Religions  are  mostly  petri- 
fied and  decayed,  overgrown  with  forms  and 
choked  with  mysteries.  We  can  prove  that 
there  is  no  need  for  this.  All  that  is  essen- 
tial is  both  very  simple  and  very  sure. 

The  clear  call  for  our  help  comes  from 
those  who  have  had  a  loss  and  who  yearn  to 
re-establish  connection.  This  also  can  be 
overdone.  If  your  boy  were  in  Australia, 
you  would  not  expect  him  to  continually  stop 
his  work  and  write  long  letters  at  all  sea- 
sons. Having  got  in  touch,  be  moderate  in 
your  demands.  Do  not  be  satisfied  with  any 
evidence  short  of  the  best,  but  having  got 
that,  you  can,  it  seems  to  me,  wait  for  that 
short  period  when  we  shall  all  be  re-united. 
I  am  in  touch  at  present  with  thirteen  moth- 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS        99 

ers  who  are  in  correspondence  with  their 
dead  sons.  In  each  case,  the  husband,  where 
he  is  alive,  is  agreed  as  to  the  evidence.  In 
only  one  case  so  far  as  I  know  was  the  parent 
acquainted  with  psychic  matters  before  the 
war. 

Several  of  these  cases  have  peculiarities 
of  their  own.  In  two  of  them  the  figures 
of  the  dead  lads  have  appeared  beside  the 
mothers  in  a  photograph.  In  one  case  the 
first  message  to  the  mother  came  through  a 
stranger  to  whom  the  correct  address  of 
the  mother  was  given.  The  communication 
afterwards  became  direct.  In  another  case 
the  method  of  sending  messages  was  to  give 
references  to  particular  pages  and  lines  of 
books  in  distant  libraries,  the  whole  con- 
veying a  message.  The  procedure  was  to 
weed  out  all  fear  of  telepathy.  Verily  there 
is  no  possible  way  by  which  a  truth  can  be 
proved  by  which  this  truth  has  not  been 
proved. 

How  are  you  to  act?  There  is  the  diffi- 
culty. There  are  true  men  and  there  are 
frauds.  You  have  to  work  warily.  So  far 
as  professional  mediums  go,  you  will  not 


100  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

find  it  difficult  to  get  recommendations. 
Even  with  the  best  you  may  draw  entirely 
blank.  The  conditions  are  very  elusive. 
And  yet  some  get  the  result  at  once.  We 
cannot  lay  down  laws,  because  the  law  works 
from  the  other  side  as  well  as  this.  Nearly 
every  woman  is  an  undeveloped  medium. 
Let  her  try  her  own  powers  of  automatic 
writing.  There  again,  what  is  done  must  be 
done  with  every  precaution  against  self- 
deception,  and  in  a  reverent  and  prayerful 
mood.  But  if  you  are  earnest,  you  will  win 
through  somehow,  for  someone  else  is  prob- 
ably trying  on  the  other  side. 

Some  people  discountenance  communica- 
tion upon  the  ground  that  it  is  hindering  the 
advance  of  the  departed.  There  is  not  a 
tittle  of  evidence  for  this.  The  assertions 
of  the  spirits  are  entirely  to  the  contrary 
and  they  declare  that  they  are  helped  and 
strengthened  by  the  touch  with  those  whom 
they  love.  I  know  few  more  moving  pas- 
sages in  their  simple  boyish  eloquence  than 
those  in  which  Raymond  describes  the  feel- 
ings of  the  dead  boys  who  want  to  get  mes- 
sages back  to  their  people  and  find  that  ig- 


PROBLEMS  AND  LIMITATIONS      101 

norance  and  prejudice  are  a  perpetual  bar. 
"It  is  hard  to  think  your  sons  are  dead,  but 
such  a  lot  of  people  do  think  so.  It  is  re- 
volting to  hear  the  boys  tell  you  how  no  one 
speaks  of  them  ever.  It  hurts  me  through 
and  through." 

Above  all  read  the  literature  of  this  sub- 
ject. It  has  been  far  too  much  neglected, 
not  only  by  the  material  world  but  by  be- 
lievers. Soak  yourself  with  this  grand 
truth.  Make  yourself  familiar  with  the 
overpowering  evidence.  Get  away  from  the 
phenomenal  side  and  learn  the  lofty  teach- 
ing from  such  beautiful  books  as  After 
Death  or  from  Stainton  Moses'  Spirit 
Teachings.  There  is  a  whole  library  of  such 
literature,  of  unequal  value  but  of  a  high 
average.  Broaden  and  spiritualize  your 
thoughts.  Show  the  results  in  your  lives. 
Unselfishness,  that  is  the  keynote  to  prog- 
ress. Realise  not  as  a  belief  or  a  faith,  but 
as  a  fact  which  is  as  tangible  as  the  streets  of 
London,  that  we  are  moving  on  soon  to  an- 
other life,  that  all  will  be  very  happy  there, 
and  that  the  only  possible  way  in  which  that 
happiness  can  be  marred  or  deferred  is  by 


10«  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

folly  and  selfishness  in  these  few  fleeting 
years. 

It  must  be  repeated  that  while  the  new 
revelation  may  seem  destructive  to  those 
who  hold  Christian  dogmas  with  extreme 
rigidity,  it  has  quite  the  opposite  effect  upon 
the  mind  which,  like  so  many  modern  minds, 
had  come  to  look  upon  the  whole  Christian 
scheme  as  a  huge  delusion.  It  is  shown 
clearly  that  the  old  revelation  has  so  many 
resemblances,  defaced  by  time  and  mangled 
by  man's  mishandling  and  materialism,  but 
still  denoting  the  same  general  scheme,  that 
undoubtedly  both  have  come  from  the  same 
source.  The  accepted  ideas  of  life  after 
death,  of  higher  and  lower  spirits,  of  com- 
parative happiness  depending  upon  our  own 
conduct,  of  chastening  by  pain,  of  tguardian 
spirits,  of  high  teachers,  of  an  infinite  cen- 
tral power,  of  circles  above  circles  approach- 
ing nearer  to  His  presence — all  of  these  con- 
ceptions appear  once  more  and  are  confirmed 
by  many  witnesses.  It  is  only  the  claims  of 
infallibility  and  of  monopoly,  the  bigotry 
and  pedantry  of  theologians,  and  the  man- 
made  rituals  which  take  the  life  out  of  the 


103 

God-given  thoughts — it  is  only  this  which 
has  defaced  the  truth. 

I  cannot  end  this  little  book  better  than  by 
using  words  more  eloquent  than  any  which 
I  could  write,  a  splendid  sample  of  English 
style  as  well  as  of  English  thought.  They 
are  from  the  pen  of  that  considerable 
thinker  and  poet,  Mr.  Gerald  Massey,  and 
were  written  many  years  ago. 

"  Spiritualism  has  been  for  me,  in  com- 
mon with  many  others,  such  a  lifting  of 
the  mental  horizon  and  letting-in  of  the 
heavens — such  a  formation  of  faith  into 
facts,  that  I  can  only  compare  life  with- 
out it  to  sailing  on  board  ship  with  hatches 
battened  down  and  being  kept  a  prisoner, 
living  by  the  light  of  a  candle,  and  then 
suddenly,  on  some  splendid  starry  night, 
allowed  to  go  on  deck  for  the  first  time  to 
see  the  stupendous  mechanism  of  the 
heavens  all  aglow  with  the  glory  of  God." 


SUPPLEMENTAEY  DOCUMENTS 


THE  NEXT  PHASE  OP  LIFE 

I  HAVE  spoken  in  the  text  of  the  striking 
manner  in  which  accounts  of  life  in  the  next 
phase,  though  derived  from  the  most  varied 
and  independent  sources,  are  still  in  essen- 
tial agreement — an  agreement  which  occa- 
sionally descends  to  small  details.  A  vari- 
ety is  introduced  by  that  fuller  vision  which 
can  see  and  describe  more  than  one  plane, 
but  the  accounts  of  that  happy  land  to  which 
the  ordinary  mortal  may  hope  to  aspire,  are 
very  consistent.  Since  I  wrote  the  state- 
ment I  have  read  three  fresh  independent 
descriptions  which  again  confirm  the  point. 
One  is  the  account  given  by  "  A  King's  Coun- 
sel," in  his  recent  book,  I  Heard  a  Voice 
(Kegan  Paul),  which  I  recommended  to  in- 
quirers, though  it  has  a  strong  Eoman 
Catholic  bias  running  through  it  which 
shows  that  our  main  lines  of  thought 
are  persistent.  A  second  is  the  little  book 

107 


108  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

The  Light  on  the  Future,  giving  the 
very  interesting  details  of  the  beyond, 
gathered  by  an  earnest  and  reverent  circle 
in  Dublin.  The  other  came  in  a  private 
letter  from  Mr.  Hubert  Wales,  and  is,  I 
think,  most  instructive.  Mr.  Wales  is  a 
cautious  and  rather  sceptical  inquirer  who 
had  put  away  his  results  with  incredulity 
(he  had  received  them  through  his  own  auto- 
matic writing).  On  reading  my  account  of 
the  conditions  described  in  the  beyond,  he 
hunted  up  his  own  old  script  which  had 
commended  itself  so  little  to  him  when  he 
first  produced  it.  He  says:  " After  read- 
ing your  article,  I  was  struck,  almost  star- 
tled, by  the  circumstance  that  the  statements 
which  had  purported  to  be  made  to  me  re- 
garding conditions  after  death  coincided — 
I  think  almost  to  the  smallest  detail — with 
those  you  set  out  as  the  result  of  your  colla- 
tion of  material  obtained  from  a  great  num- 
ber of  sources.  I  cannot  think  there  was 
anything  in  my  antecedent  reading  to  ac- 
count for  this  coincidence.  I  had  certainly 
read  nothing  you  had  published  on  the  sub- 
ject. I  had  purposely  avoided  Raymond 


THE  NEXT  PHASE  OF  LIFE         109 

and  books  like  it,  in  order  not  to  vitiate  my 
own  results,  and  the  Proceedings  of  the 
S.P.R.  which  I  had  read  at  that  time,  do 
not  touch,  as  you  know,  upon  after-death 
conditions.  At  any  rate  I  obtained,  at  vari- 
ous times,  statements  (as  my  contemporary 
notes  show)  to  the  effect  that,  in  this  per- 
sisting state  of  existence,  they  have  bodies 
which,  though  imperceptible  by  our  senses, 
are  as  solid  to  them  as  ours  to  us,  that  these 
bodies  are  based  on  the  general  characteris- 
tics of  our  present  bodies  but  beautified ;  that 
they  have  no  age,  no  pain,  no  rich  and  poor ; 
that  they  wear  clothes  and  take  nourish- 
ment; that  they  do  not  sleep  (though  they 
spoke  of  passing  occasionally  into  a  semi- 
conscious state  which  they  called  *  lying 
asleep' — a  condition,  it  just  occurs  to  me, 
which  seems  to  correspond  roughly  with  the 
'HypnoidaP  state) ;  that,  after  a  period 
which  is  usually  shorter  than  the  average 
life-time  here,  they  pass  to  some  further 
state  of  existence;  that  people  of  similar 
thoughts,  tastes  and  feelings,  gravitate  to- 
gether; that  married  couples  do  not  neces- 
sarily reunite,  but  that  the  love  of  man  and 


110  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

woman  continues  and  is  freed  of  elements 
which  with  us  often  militate  against  its  per- 
fect realization;  that  immediately  after 
death  people  pass  into  a  semi-conscious  rest- 
state  lasting  various  periods,  that  they  are 
unable  to  experience  bodily  pain,  but  are 
susceptible  at  times  to  some  mental  anxiety; 
that  a  painful  death  is  'absolutely  un- 
known,' that  religious  beliefs  make  no  dif- 
ference whatever  in  the  after-state,  and  that 
their  life  altogether  is  intensely  happy,  and 
no  one  having  ever  realised  it  could  wish  to 
return  here.  I  got  no  reference  to  'work' 
by  that  word,  but  much  to  the  various  inter- 
ests that  were  said  to  occupy  them.  That 
is  probably  only  another  way  of  saying  the 
same  thing.  'Work'  with  us  has  come  usu- 
ally to  mean  'work  to  live,'  and  that,  I  was 
emphatically  informed,  was  not  the  case  with 
them — that  all  the  requirements  of  life  were 
somehow  mysteriously  'provided.'  Neither 
did  I  get  any  reference  to  a  definite  'tem- 
porary penal  state,'  but  I  gathered  that 
people  begin  there  at  the  point  of  intellectual 
and  moral  development  where  they  leave  off 
here ;  and  since  their  state  of  happiness  was 


THE  NEXT  PHASE  OF  LIFE         111 

based  mainly  upon  sympathy,  those  who 
came  over  in  a  low  moral  condition,  failed 
at  first  for  various  lengths  of  time  to  have 
the  capacity  to  appreciate  and  enjoy  it" 


II 

AUTOMATIC  WRITING 

THIS  form  of  mediumship  gives  the  very 
highest  results,  and  yet  in  its  very  nature  is 
liable  to  self-deception.  Are  we  using  our 
own  hand  or  is  an  outside  power  directing 
it?  It  is  only  by  the  information  received 
that  we  can  tell,  and  even  then  we  have  to 
make  broad  allowance  for  the  action  of  our 
own  subconscious  knowledge.  It  is  worth 
while  perhaps  to  quote  what  appears  to  me 
to  be  a  thoroughly  critic-proof  case,  so  that 
the  inquirer  may  see  how  strong  the  evidence 
is  that  these  messages  are  not  self -evolved. 
This  case  is  quoted  in  Mr.  Arthur  Hill's  re- 
cent book  Man  Is  a  Spirit  (Cassell  &  Co.) 
and  is  contributed  by  a  gentleman  who  takes 
the  name  of  Captain  James  Burton.  He  is, 
I  understand,  the  same  medium  (amateur) 
through  whose  communications  the  position 

of  the  buried  ruins  at  Glastonbury  have  re- 

112 


AUTOMATIC  WRITING  113 

cently  been  located.  "A  week  after  my 
father's  funeral  I  was  writing  a  business 
letter,  when  something  seemed  to  intervene 
between  my  hand  and  the  motor  centres  of 
my  brain,  and  the  hand  wrote  at  an  amazing 
rate  a  letter,  signed  with  my  father's  sig- 
nature and  purporting  to  come  from  him. 
I  was  upset,  and  my  right  side  and  arm  be- 
came cold  and  numb.  For  a  year  after  this 
letters  came  frequently,  and  always  at  unex- 
pected times.  I  never  knew  what  they  con- 
tained until  I  examined  them  with  a  mag- 
nif ying-glass :  they  were  microscopic.  And 
they  contained  a  vast  amount  of  matter  with 
which  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  be  ac- 
quainted." .  .  .  "  Unknown  to  me,  my 
mother,  who  was  staying  some  sixty  miles 
away,  lost  her  pet  dog,  which  my  father  had 
given  her.  The  same  night  I  had  a  letter 
from  him  condoling  with  her,  and  stating 
that  the  dog  was  now  with  him.  l  All  things 
which  love  us  and  are  necessary  to  our  hap- 
piness in  the  world  are  with  us  here.'  A 
most  sacred  secret,  known  to  no  one  but  my 
father  and  mother,  concerning  a  matter 
which  occurred  years  before  I  was  born, 


114  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

was  afterwards  told  me  in  the  script,  with 
the  comment:  'Tell  your  mother  this,  and 
she  will  know  that  it  is  I,  your  father,  who 
am  writing.'  My  mother  had  been  unable 
to  accept  the  possibility  up  to  now,  but  when 
I  told  her  this  she  collapsed  and  fainted. 
From  that  moment  the  letters  became  her 
greatest  comfort,  for  they  were  lovers  dur- 
ing the  forty  years  of  their  married  life,  and 
his  death  almost  broke  her  heart. 

"  As  for  myself,  I  am  as  convinced  that  my 
father,  in  his  original  personality,  still  ex- 
ists, as  if  he  were  still  in  his  study  with  the 
door  shut.  He  is  no  more  dead  than  he 
would  be  were  he  living  in  America. 

"I  have  compared  the  diction  and  vocabu- 
ulary  of  these  letters  with  those  employed  in 
my  own  writing — I  am  not  unknown  as  a 
magazine  contributor — and  I  find  no  points 
of  similarity  between  the  two."  There  is 
much  further  evidence  in  this  case  for  which 
I  refer  the  reader  to  the  book  itself. 


Ill 

THE  CHERITON  DUGOUT 

I  HAVE  mentioned  in  the  text  that  I  had 
some  recent  experience  of  a  case  where  a 
"polter-geist"  or  mischievous  spirit  had 
been  manifesting.  These  entities  appear  to 
be  of  an  undeveloped  order  and  nearer  to 
earth  conditions  than  any  others  with  which 
we  are  acquainted.  This  comparative  ma- 
terialism upon  their  part  places  them  low  in 
the  scale  of  spirit,  and  undesirable  perhaps 
as  communicants,  but  it  gives  them  a  special 
value  as  calling  attention  to  crude  obvious 
phenomena,  and  so  arresting  the  human  at- 
tention and  forcing  upon  our  notice  that 
there  are  other  forms  of  life  within  the  uni- 
verse. These  borderland  forces  have  at- 
tracted passing  attention  at  several  times 
and  places  in  the  past,  such  cases  as  the 
Wesley  persecution  at  Epworth,  the  Drum- 

115 


116  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

mer  of  Tedworth,  the  Bells  of  Dealing,  etc., 
startling  the  country  for  a  time — each  of 
them  being  an  impingement  of  unknown 
forces  upon  human  life.  Then  almost 
simultaneously  came  the  Hydesville  case  in 
America  and  the  Cideville  disturbances  in 
France,  which  were  so  marked  that  they 
could  not  be  overlooked.  From  them  sprang 
the  whole  modern  movement  which,  reason- 
ing upwards  from  small  things  to  great,  from 
raw  things  to  developed  ones,  from  phenom- 
ena to  messages,  is  destined  to  give  religion 
the  firmest  basis  upon  which  it  has  ever 
stood.  Therefore,  humble  and  foolish  as 
these  manifestations  may  seem,  they  have 
been  the  seed  of  large  developments,  and  are 
worthy  of  our  respectful,  though  critical,  at- 
tention. 

Many  such  manifestations  have  appeared 
of  recent  years  in  various  quarters  of  the 
world,  each  of  which  is  treated  by  the  press 
in  a  more  or  less  comic  vein,  with  a  convic- 
tion apparently  that  the  use  of  the  word 
" spook"  discredits  the  incident  and  brings 
discussion  to  an  end.  It  is  remarkable  that 
each  is  treated  as  an  entirely  isolated  phe- 


THE  CHERITON  DUGOUT  117 

nomenon,  and  thus  the  ordinary  reader  gets 
no  idea  of  the  strength  of  the  cumulative  evi- 
dence. In  this  particular  case  of  the  Cheri- 
ton  Dugout  the  facts  are  as  follows : 

Mr.  Jaques,  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  and  a 
man  of  education  and  intelligence,  residing 
at  Embrook  House,  Cheriton,  near  Folke- 
stone, made  a  dugout  just  opposite  to  his 
residence  as  a  protection  against  air  raids. 
The  house  was,  it  may  he  remarked,  of  great 
antiquity,  part  of  it  being  an  old  religious 
foundation  of  the  14th  Century.  The  dug- 
out was  constructed  at  the  base  of  a  small 
bluff,  and  the  sinking  was  through  ordinary 
soft  sandstone.  The  work  was  carried  out 
by  a  local  jobbing  builder  called  Rolfe,  as- 
sisted by  a  lad.  Soon  after  the  inception  of 
his  task  he  was  annoyed  by  his  candle  being 
continually  blown  out  by  jets  of  sand,  and 
by  similar  jets  hitting  up  against  his  own 
face.  These  phenomena  he  imagined  to  be 
due  to  some  gaseous  or  electrical  cause,  but 
they  reached  such  a  point  that  his  work  was 
seriously  hampered,  and  he  complained  to 
Mr.  Jaques,  who  received  the  story  with  ab- 
solute incredulity.  The  persecution  con- 


118  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

tinued,  however,  and  increased  in  intensity, 
taking  the  form  now  of  actual  blows  from 
moving  material,  considerable  objects,  such 
as  stones  and  bits  of  brick,  flying  past  him 
and  hitting  the  walls  with  a  violent  impact. 
Mr.  Rolfe,  still  searching  for  a  physical  ex- 
planation, went  to  Mr.  Hesketh,  the  Munici- 
pal Electrician  of  Folkestone,  a  man  of  high 
education  and  intelligence,  who  went  out  to 
the  scene  of  the  affair  and  saw  enough  to  con- 
vince himself  that  the  phenomena  were  per- 
fectly genuine  and  inexplicable  by  ordinary 
laws.  A  Canadian  soldier  who  was  billeted 
upon  Mr.  Rolfe,  heard  an  account  of  the  hap- 
penings from  his  host,  and  after  announcing 
his  conviction  that  the  latter  had  "bats  in  his 
belfry"  proceeded  to  the  dugout,  where  his 
experiences  were  so  instant  and  so  violent 
that  he  rushed  out  of  the  place  in  horror. 
The  housekeeper  at  the  Hall  also  was  a  wit- 
ness of  the  movement  of  bricks  when  no 
human  hands  touched  them.  Mr.  Jaques, 
whose  incredulity  had  gradually  thawed  be- 
fore all  this  evidence,  went  down  to  the  dug- 
out in  the  absence  of  everyone,  and  was  de- 
parting from  it  when  five  stones  rapped  up 


THE  CHERITON  DUGOUT  119 

against  the  door  from  the  inside.  He  re- 
opened the  door  and  saw  them  lying  there 
upon  the  floor.  Sir  William  Barrett  had 
meanwhile  come  down,  but  had  seen  nothing. 
His  stay  was  a  short  one.  I  afterwards 
made  four  visits  of  about  two  hours  each  ta 
the  grotto,  but  got  nothing  direct,  though  I 
saw  the  new  brickwork  all  chipped  about  by 
the  blows  which  it  had  received.  The  forces 
appeared  to  have  not  the  slightest  interest  in 
psychical  research,  for  they  never  played  up 
to  an  investigator,  and  yet  their  presence 
and  action  have  been  demonstrated  to  at 
least  seven  different  observers,  and,  as  I  have 
said,  they  left  their  traces  behind  them,  even 
to  the  extent  of  picking  the  flint  stones  out 
of  the  new  cement  which  was  to  form  the 
floor,  and  arranging  them  in  tidy  little  piles. 
The  obvious  explanation  that  the  boy  was 
an  adept  at  mischief  had  to  be  set  aside  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  the  phenomena  occurred 
in  his  absence.  One  extra  man  of  science 
wandered  on  to  the  scene  for  a  moment,  but 
as  his  explanation  was  that  the  movements 
occurred  through  the  emanation  of  marsh- 
gas,  it  did  not  advance  matters  much.  The 


180  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

disturbances  are  still  proceeding,  and  I  have 
had  a  letter  this  very  morning  (February 
21st,  1918)  with  fuller  and  later  details  from 
Mr.  Hesketh,  the  Engineer. 

What  is  the  real  explanation  of  such  a 
matter  ?  I  can  only  say  that  I  have  advised 
Mr.  Jaques  to  dig  into  the  bluff  under  which 
he  is  constructing  his  cellar.  I  made  some 
investigation  myself  upon  the  top  of  it  and 
convinced  myself  that  the  surface  ground  at 
that  spot  has  at  some  time  been  disturbed 
to  the  depth  of  at  least  five  feet.  Something 
has,  I  should  judge,  been  buried  at  some  date, 
and  it  is  probable  that,  as  in  the  case  cited 
in  the  text,  there  is  a  connection  between  this 
and  the  disturbances.  It  is  very  probable 
that  Mr.  Eolfe  is,  unknown  to  himself,  a 
physical  medium,  and  that  when  he  was  in 
the  confined  space  of  the  cellar  he  turned 
it  into  a  cabinet  in  which  his  magnetic  pow- 
ers could  accumulate  and  be  available  for 
use.  It  chanced  that  there  was  on  the  spot 
some  agency  which  chose  to  use  them,  and 
hence  the  phenomena.  When  Mr.  Jaques 
went  alone  to  the  grotto  the  power  left  be- 
hind by  Mr.  Eolfe,  who  had  been  in  it  all 


THE  CHERITON  DUGOUT  121 

morning,  was  not  yet  exhausted  and  he  was 
able  to  get  some  manifestations.  So  I  read 
it,  but  it  is  well  not  to  be  dogmatic  on  such 
matters.  If  there  is  systematic  digging  I 
should  expect  an  epilogue  to  the  story. 

Whilst  these  proofs  were  in  the  press  a 
second  very  marked  case  of  a  Polter-geist 
came  within  my  knowledge.  I  cannot  with- 
out breach  of  confidence  reveal  the  details 
and  the  phenomena  are  still  going  on.  Curi- 
ously enough,  it  was  because  one  of  the  suf- 
ferers from  the  invasion  read  some  remarks 
of  mine  upon  the  Cheriton  dugout  that  this 
other  case  came  to  my  knowledge,  for  the 
lady  wrote  to  me  at  once  for  advice  and  as- 
sistance. The  place  is  remote  and  I  have 
not  yet  been  able  to  visit  it,  but  from  the  full 
accounts  which  I  have  now  received  it  seems 
to  present  all  the  familiar  features,  with  the 
phenomenon  of  direct  writing  superadded. 
Some  specimens  of  this  script  have  reached 
me.  Two  clergymen  have  endeavoured  to 
mitigate  the  phenomena,  which  are  occasion- 
ally very  violent,  but  so  far  without  result. 
It  may  be  some  consolation  to  any  others 
who  may  be  suffering  from  this  strange  in- 


122  THE  NEW  REVELATION 

fliction,  to  know  that  in  the  many  cases  which 
have  been  carefully  recorded  there  is  none  in 
which  any  physical  harm  has  been  inflicted 
upon  man  or  beast. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000742309     8 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
University  of  California,  San  Diego 

DATE  DUE 


APR  03  RtlTU 


CI39 


UCSD  Libr. 


